Heaven 17

A synth-pop band formed in 1980 by Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh, after they left Human League. Ware and Marsh's original intent was to establish an entity called the British Electric Foundation, which would be both a production company and a record label. Needing material to release to establish the label, Ware and Marsh formed Heaven 17 with singer Glenn Gregory (who had been their first choice for Human League's singer, but he wasn't available at the time), and composed and released their first album, Penthouse and Pavement, in 1981. After the success of the single "Let Me Go", the album was re-packaged with several different tracks and released as an eponymous album in the U.S. At the same time, Ware and Marsh were releasing albums under the British Electric Foundation label, mostly consisting of cover songs, although there was the interesting cassette-only release titled "Music for Stowaways", which was intended specifically to be played on the then-new Sony Walkman.

After the release of Heaven 17's second album, The Luxury Gap, in 1983, the other British Electric Foundation projects were largely set aside; nothing else would be released under that name until the 1990s. The band worked on the Band Aid "all star" release of "Do They Know It's Christmas" in 1984. However, at the time, Heaven 17 was not doing live performances, and so they did not appear at the Band-Aid concert. They finally began performing live after the release of the 1986 album Pleasure One, in which singer Billie Godfrey joined the band as a part-time fourth member. Heaven 17 was not averse to employing session musicians to add backing parts and performances on instruments that the band did not play, such as guitar and bass.

The 1990s were a quiet period for the band. Marsh and Ware resumed producing British Electric Foundation releases, employing a variety of singers, while Gregory formed his own side band, Honeyroot. The decade saw the release of only one Heaven 17 album, Bigger than America. Towards the end of the decade, Ware began to get interested in EDM, and he began participating in some remix projects and teaching himself to DJ. When the band finally released another album, Before After, in 2005, it was heavily influenced by dance music. At this point, Marsh began to lose interest, and he stopped appearing in live performances after 2006; he was reported to have disappeared for several months. In 2008 the band released Naked As Advertised, consisting mainly of re-workings of early Heaven 17 and Human League material. In 2009, Ware confirmed that Marsh had left the band.

In 2011, the band added Berniece Scott (the daughter of "M" Robin Scott, who did the early-'80s synth-pop single "Pop Muzik") to replace Marsh. Although they continue doing live performances and tours, there has been no album of all-new material since 2005. (A download-only EP named Not for Public Broadcast was released in 2017.) Ware also sometimes appears as a DJ and remixer at festivals. Marsh is reported to now be teaching music.