The Trevor Horn Band, now billed as 'Trevor Horn and his band', returned for a 3-date min-tour of England in December 2025, finishing in London, where I was happy to see them. Opening, just at this date, was Belouis Some, with an enthusiastic, '80s-tinged set.
The Trevor Horn Band line-up is familiar (Trevor Horn, Lol Creme, Simon Bloor, Julian Hinton, Alex McArthur, Florence Rawlings, Izzy Chase and, on front of house, Tim Wiedner), but with a few changes: Ash Soan, who was in the original line-up of The Producers, is back on drums; while instead of Ryan Molloy on vocals, we had Jakko Jakszyk (vocals, guitar) and Roberto Angrisani (vocals), both of whom have performed with the band before.
The band opened with Frankies Goes to Hollywood’s "Two Tribes", with a good vocal from Angrisani, and then into "Video Killed the Radio Star", including a short "Check It Out" outro, as the band usually does. Angrisani returned for an emotional "Cry", with Creme taking a guitar solo at the end. Then Creme took lead vocals for "Rubber Bullets". So far, so familiar. This is the usual Trevor Horn Band material and it was all OK, but the performance felt a little bit flat.
Jakszyk to this point had looked fairly lost on stage, strumming some rhythm guitar parts and contributing a few backing vocals in "Rubber Bullets". He seemed under-rehearsed, perhaps a late addition to the line-up. But all that was to change for "It's Different for Girls" where he took lead vocals. Jakko’s vocals throughout were a highlight of the evening, bringing a star quality.
Horn started to introduce a Buggles song next, before being corrected that they were playing "Can't Fight the Moonlight". Having seen the set list from the first two shows, I had been expecting "Slave to the Rhythm" and "Owner of a Lonely Heart" before "Can't Fight…" and was worried whether they had had to shorten the set. And then we didn't get "Can't Fight the Moonlight" because McArthur was having technical problems. McArthur was running playbacks, which they use for additional elements on some songs. So, instead we went into another 10cc song, with "The Dean and I", Creme again taking lead vocals. Technical problems fixed and we did get "Can't Fight the Moonlight", with Chase taking lead vocals.
The second Buggles song of the evening (and the second Buggles single) was "Living in the Plastic Age", with Horn on lead vocals and Bloor taking the lead keyboard role, as he also did for the next song, Frankie's "The Power of Love". Jakko was back for another fantastic vocal.
Horn introduced "All the Things She Said", with the mention of Russia drawing a few boos from the audience. Horn pointed out that the song long predated Russia's invasion of Ukraine and that the girls didn't personally invade! (Perhaps he hasn't seen Julia Volkova's more recent support for Putin?) Chase and Rawlings shared lead vocals.
Jakko was back for another good lead vocal on "I'm Not in Love", with Creme on keys. Then we had a jaunty take on The Buggles' "Elstree", with Bloor again on lead keyboards.
Horn told a story of how Rod Stewart had complained about the unusual 5-bar intro of "Downtown Train", making it tricky for him to know when to come him. Jakko was back on vocals and brought the song to life.
The set list the band plays has been fairly constant for several years, with some variations from show to show. I was a bit disappointed they had not updated the set list more for this mini-tour, but one change they did make was more Buggles material. The fourth Buggles songs of the evening was "Clean, Clean", I think a first for the band and a song that wasn't even played on the US Buggles tour when Horn was opening for Seal. That makes The Age of Plastic the most well represented album in the set. While Bloor mostly took the lead on keyboards for Buggles songs, this one was taken by Hinton.
The regular part of the show then ended with "Relax" (making Welcome to the Pleasuredome the second most represented album with 3 songs), sung by Roberto, who strode up and down the front of a stage flanked by Chase and Rawlings.
But that was not it for the evening. "Slave to the Rhythm", "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and "Kiss from a Rose" has been played on the first two nights, so where were they? The answer came when the band brought out Seal as a surprise guest. (Perhaps not that much of a surprise given he has guested with the band before.)
Seal is a charismatic showman. He dominated the stage. They'd set up two music stands with the words for "Slave to the Rhythm" on them, which he was clearly using, but he still delivered an excellent performance, even sinuously dancing at the appropriate point in the lyric. And then on to "Owner of a Lonely Heart", which he credited as persuading him to sign to ZTT. (He particularly praised the drums.) The audience in the stalls had been on their feet as soon as Seal had come out. Now he got us singing along to the chorus.
As the band got ready for the next song, someone in the audience called out for "Killer" and Bloor played a bar of it, amusing Seal, but the next song was actually "Kiss from a Rose". Again, Seal got us singing along (which is a lot harder to do than for "Owner…"!).
And, finally, after some brief discussion, Horn, Bloor, Seal and Soan managed an impromptu version of "Killer" (joined by McArthur on a shaker)! Lots of Seal getting the audience to sing "Solitary brother" and "Solitary sister".
In all, a very good show. It felt a little under-rehearsed in places, but at its best when the vocalists shone. It was nice to hear more Buggles songs, but the set list could be more adventurous in places. Seal is always worth seeing, but the vocalist of the night was Jakko. Horn is a very solid bassist. However, the instrumentalist of the night was Soan, a powerful drummer, but still with great feel. Bloor’s versatility also stood out, handling a Trevor Rabin guitar solo or a Geoff Downes keyboard part equally easily.
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