The sounds of the 80s is unmistakeable: synthy keys, powerful melodies and some fantastic characters have made the era one which we cannot help but be obsessed with.

Now, after spending years stripping back his megahits, Midge Ure is back, along with Band Electronica, with reinvented electronic beats and sounds that are more than just nostalgia. The music is atmospheric and high-energy, but keeping close to the originals in their soul and heart.

Following the tour Midge also releases his newest album, Orchestrated, at the beginning of December, which is 18 months of reworking classics like Vienna and Dancing with Tears In My Eyes for orchestra

For Midge, the acoustic versions of many of his songs brought people into closer communion with the lyrics, making them more poignant and intimate, but the call of a Korg keyboard was too much to resist.

“The grass is always greener,” he says.

“I think I would love to get a synthesiser out and the electric guitars and play all the songs in a similar way to how they were recorded, in a very authentic manner and that’s precisely what I’ve done on this tour and it’s been great fun.”

The challenge is not just in creating a new experience for the audience, but also to ensure they remain fresh for the performers, rather than becoming stale through overplaying. For Midge, keeping the essence of the songs in how they were written was incredibly important, but choosing not to replicate them exactly adds new flavour into the performance and prevents him from “stepping sideways”.

He says: “Singing the songs in any form the audience is happy, they’re quite happy to hear Vienna and If I Was and Dancing with Tears In My Eyes but the challenge is to make it interesting for me so it doesn’t become painting by numbers – sounding like the song but with no life or soul in it.

“So I try and reinvent how I perform the songs.”

One thing that adds new heart into this tour is Band Electronica, who have brought youthful exuberance to his songs and provided him pure oxygen as they perform together.

“I’m reliving what it’s like when I was their age – going out in front of an audience or going on tour, travelling the world,” he says.

“I’m still incredibly enthused by music. I have done it all my life and the enthusiasm has never waned, but it’s like an inhale of pure oxygen going out with young musicians who are doing this almost for the first time on this level, which is great.”

Since Midge first came onto the scene in the 1970s with Silk, followed by Rich Kids, Thin Lizzy, Visage and Ultravox throughout these years and the 1980s, each has left its own mark on his musical style as well as the bands he listened to growing up, with it was The Beatles, Small Faces, Roxy Music or David Bowie.

He says: “All of those little things leave a mark and it’s almost like a pinball machine.

“You’re the ball and when a flipper hits you it sends you off in a different direction then you could be hit by another flipper which sends you in another direction again and it’s all part of the learning curve.

“It’s all who you become and it gives you a particular style and image of yourself and I’ve been lucky to work in a variety of different places.”

In his work, which often overlapped as he finished recording one album as he started a new band or tour, he feels it’s not about creating a certain type of music or not allowing genres to mix, but creating and being inspired by whatever has come around – it’s about making good music and now he believes musical barriers have gone down.

But technological changes have certainly made this tour something quite different from Midge’s time playing in bands in the 1980s.

“The last time Ultravox did a full concert was prior to Live Aid and we had something like 24 keyboards on stage because that’s the only way to replicate the album,” he says.

“Now there are 3 single keyboards with a laptop which provides the individual synthesiser sounds – you still have to play it all but all of this mountain of technology is now compressed into a laptop and a keyboard.

“In one hand you’ve got a cello and in the net hand you’ve got a synthesiser and in the next you’ve got a string machine so it’s a whole different way of performing.”

So what can an audience expect from Midge Ure and the Band Electronica? First of all, they can expect a truly 80s evening with some soul from The Christians and bouncy and bubbly Altered Images, featuring Clare Grogan, also on the bill, exploring all the different sounds that came through in the iconic decade.

Midge says of Clare: “I’ve known Clare for a while, she is just this fantastic, bubbly fun character.

“She doesn’t really tour that much but to see her out there every night she is so engaging with the audience it’s fantastic. She’s very different from me as she gets the audience singing along and jumping up and down, whereas I just try and get as much music in as possible, so it all works as a combination.”

Midge says: “People are very generic about a decade but a decade was a long time. It’s not all Stock Aitken Waterman, it wasn’t just electronic rock, it wasn’t just Depeche Mode.

“A lot of stuff happened in that decade and this package gives you a flavour of what it was like.”

And secondly, you can expect the opportunity to hear some of the big hits you know and love, in a way you may not have heard, including Midge’s and Phil Lynott’s Yellow Pearl, which will bring back memories for Top of the Pops lovers.

Midge Ure with Band Electronica, The Christians and Altered Images featuring Clare Grogan comes to the Alban Arena on November 17. Tickets are available on their website.

Midge’s new album Orchestrated will be released on December 1, and is available for pre-order now https://MidgeUre.lnk.to/Pre-orderFA .