Erasure frontman Andy Bell says his band will head back in the studio this year to mark 30 years in the business.
The singer is in Manchester this weekend as part of the Queer Contact Festival - 11 days of events focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender culture in Greater Manchester and now in its eighth year at the Contact Theatre.
Andy, 51, opened the festival last night with his Saint Torsten show - a mix of music and theatre that he calls “electro-acoustic cabaret” that started with his fourth album Torsten The Bareback Saint.
The lead character in the concept record, Torsten, will appear on another two records as part of a trilogy - the second part due for release on March 4, and called Torsten, The Beautiful Libertine.
He’s planning gigs to perform it later this year, but says he’s also heading back into the studio to work with long-term collaborator Vince Clarke to write new songs for another Erasure album - a follow up to The Violent Flame which the group released in 2014.
“We are recording, starting in April,” says Andy, “but we have no plans to tour yet because Vince’s child is in school and he needs to keep him there! It’s not out of the question that we might tour.
“We’re probably going to do a 30th evening, maybe we’ll DJ and take questions, and we’re doing a huge box set and reissuing the first three albums on vinyl.
“I still love Erasure. Because it was so intense, you have to put it on the back burner for a while and come back to it. The down period has to be quite long, because it’s always two years out of your life when you decide to do something.”
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Andy - who scored massive international hits with the likes of singles Sometimes, A Little Respect, Oh L'amour, Drama!, and The Circus, and played a four week residency at Manchester Apollo in 1992 with Erasure - also revealed that he had considered “giving up music. I was thinking what else I could do? And I’m glad I didn’t now of course!” he smiles.
“Sometimes you feel you’ve hit a brick wall, and you’re questioning everything and where else you can go, and quite depressed.”
As for what he might have done instead, Andy is full of surprises and says he’d love to take on a gruesome acting role. “I would love to do horror,” he says.
“I’d love to be cast as a psycho killer. I know that’s a very weird thing to want to do! I think quite a gangster-ish, psychotic person would be perfect.”
Queer Contact is at Contact Theatre until April 14, and includes events at HOME, the RNCM, Band On The Wall and the Royal Exchange Theatre.
