Offering his first new material in 12 years with an inspired double album of instrumentals and songs, Midge Ure embarks on his visionary A Man Of Two Worlds Tour.

The album of the same name is out on May 8. Subsequent dates Brighton Dome on November 23; and Guildford’s G Live on November 30.

Divided into two halves, eight instrumental compositions and eight vocal songs, the record mirrors the concept of the live show, as Midge says: “Almost every album I’ve made over the past 40-plus years has featured at least one instrumental track. For this album I wanted to explore that further, showing two sides of what I do.

“The Man Of Two Worlds Tour reflects this idea, combining instrumentals I’ve written over the years with songs, album tracks and fan favourites side by side, taking the audience on a journey.”

As for the fact that it has been 12 years since the last new material, Midge explains: “It's not like I have been lying around on the beach twiddling my thumbs. It’s that I can't write and record when I'm touring, and I've been touring a huge amount over that whole period.

“But a variety of things came together for this to happen, some of which were self-induced. If you've got a wealth of material behind you and you're trying to write something new, then sometimes you can start writing something that you realise you've already written before. You start writing something and it feels good and it feels wonderful but then you stand back. You leave it completely alone and walk away from it for a while and then you come back and you gauge whether it is actually something new or whether it's just the continuation of something else. You do that by going away and touring and then coming back and then you know. You just know. There's a real gut feeling whether it's something that is worth pursuing or not.

“But also, I'm not in any hurry to put out records. I'm not sure that the world necessarily needs another Midge Ure record!

“And maybe that's part of it but then when we had the lockdown, obviously I couldn't walk away from the music that I was writing. So I started writing some instrumental music instead and that would take me away long enough. And so I ended up writing two albums side by side and I thought that they were completely separate. It was not until I played both albums to some friends that they said to me that the two albums belonged together. They were recorded in the same environment over the same period of time. They had the same atmospheric essence and they were both in the same mind zone and I couldn't see that. It's like the forest and trees! I needed someone else to say it.

“So the idea now is to put out a double album. I just hope I'm not conning people who think they are buying some big chorusy songs. There are some to an extent but the songs are quite poignant and relevant to the existence that we are going through at the moment. I've always written about the state of the world all the way through, right from Dancing with Tears in My Eyes, and now here we are at a time when the lunatics have taken over and the buttons being pressed, a time when we live in a mad world. If I had sung these songs in the 1960s, people would have called them protest songs!”

But the songs certainly underline just how much more important music becomes when the going get tough: “I think we do see music as our saviour when times get scary or fraught. I'm not saying that music will pull the entire planet together again but my experience of Band Aid and Live Aid was that we saw people standing up and coming together and thinking, all brought together through music. And if music makes one person sit up and think then that is great.”

The album, indeed double album, also underlines Midge’s continuing commitment to the concept of the album – even if younger generations see music in a very different way.

As he says, if a youngster was given a box of Lego right now, they would start building the chimney or a window. They wouldn't build something from the ground up, as previous generations would have done. And it's the same with music: “They don't have the same process of listening to an album from start to finish. I'm not expecting the album to resonate with the young masses now that music just comes randomly to them. It is music without context that they enjoy. There was something on Radio 4 some years back, someone talking about playing music to a 15 or 16-year-old and asking him what his favourite band was and he didn't know. He just knew the songs. He didn't know the bands.”

So yes indeed, Midge concedes, he is now playing and creating music in a very different world – as he looks back over a long and hugely successful career.

“And when you look back, none of it makes sense. Because none of it was a plan. It feels like a Walter Mitty life but the thing is that it is true. I was always just the guy in the background.”

As for the longevity: “If you look at it in a linear form then you might start thinking that I am just a dreadful musical tart that has jumped from one genre to another.”

From Slik, through the punk-tinged energy of The Rich Kids (alongside Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols), to the 80s with Ultravox and Visage…

“But none of it happened because it was planned. I just went through it all until I found Ultravox which was my musical home. I found my prince but I had kissed a lot of frogs before I kissed my prince!

“But the thing is that I have still got the passion and I've still got the excitement.”

And with the new album, as always, it is excitement plus fear: “You never know what people are going to make of it. I know the hard-core fans will listen to it but whether it reaches the great public beyond, who knows. All I can do is finish something that I'm satisfied with and hope that it goes further. I'm 72 and in a way I don't care how it is received by the media. You do what you do and you do what you think is right and you do what you think is interesting.”