Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, OMD for short, are among the pioneers of synth pop. Andy McCluskey and Paul Humphreys founded the band in 1978 on the Wirral peninsula near Liverpool and combined electronic sounds with melodies that you sing along to after the first listen.
The first single “Electricity” was released in 1979 on the Factory Records label. The international breakthrough came in 1980 with “Enola Gay”, the album “Architecture & Morality” brought “Souvenir”, “Joan of Arc” and “Maid of Orleans” in 1981. “Maid of Orleans” became the best-selling single in Germany in 1982. This was followed by “Locomotion”, “Tesla Girls”, “So in Love” and “If You Leave”, the title song to the film “Pretty in Pink”, with which OMD also reached the top ten in the USA in 1986.
In the nineties, Andy McCluskey continued the band with “Sailing on the Seven Seas” and “Pandora’s Box”. Since 2006, McCluskey and Humphreys have been back on stage together and releasing new music, most recently the album “Bauhaus Staircase” (2023).
Live, OMD are a hit machine: four decades of synth pop classics, a sound that still sounds modern today, and a frontman whose dance style has long since become cult.
