AS FIRST tours go, playing alongside Mancunians Joy Division is hardly the humblest note to have founded a music career on.

It seems fortune was to favour OMD after their auspicious entry into the music business as they bravely trod a path far removed from mainstream pop.

Arming themselves with an overdose of Kraftwerk and primitive backing from a reel to reel tape recorder named Winston (after a character in Orwell’s 1984), the Liverpool outfit were a world away from Merseyside’s Beatlemania.

They shared much more in common with the likes of moody alternative acts such as the Teardrop Explodes, Echo and the Bunnymen and Cabaret Voltaire.

By his own admission Andy McCluskey concedes they took themselves far too seriously in those early years at the end of the 70s. But he maintains a certain fondness for his band’s momentous debut performance.

"We were terrible when we started out we were up our own backsides which I find quite funny really.

"We did quite a few gigs with Joy Division in the summer of 79 and like us they were quite dark sounding.

"We had started out playing the same awful clubs as them and whenever I think of them I still see us as being the same shambling youngsters trying to get on in life," he recalled with affection.

Thirty years on and his love of electronic music has hardly faded. If anything he seems busier than ever. After 10 years "stuck reluctantly on the management bench" he felt the time was right for a revival of his old outfit. He admits that begrudgingly closing OMD down 10 years ago was something which hit him pretty hard.

But during that time the 47 year-old has been far from idle. Family life has taken centre stage and is enjoying spending time with his children.

He’s also produced chart-toppers Atomic Kitten and been involved with the Arctic Monkey’s debut recordings at his Liverpool studios.

As for his own story, his ambitions started early and found himself playing in a number of Mersey bands. One of the young singer’s earliest was the memorably monickered, Dalek I Love You, who were sadly destined to go the way of most bedroom bands.

"In the summer of 75 I heard Kraftwerk’s Autobahn and that was the first day of the rest of my life. I went to see them at the Empire in Liverpool and can even remember the seat number I was in, Q36!" he explained of the profound effect the Germanic elctro pioneers had upon his musical direction.

Their debut arrived in 1980 and made minor inroads into the charts, but it was not until their third album, Architecture and Morality hit the shelves the next year that events really took off for them. It sold more than 3 million copies and contains some of their most treasured material.

Its these songs which will be give a fine dusting down for the band’s UK reunion tour which calls at venues in London and Brighton.

"Even at the time those songs really didn’t sound like anything else around. It was very cosmopolitan and we wanted to just do our own thing with the music- we wanted to be massive and change the world with our experimental music."

At their peak during the 80s, they gained a strong cult following in America thanks largely to their music featuring within several hit films. These included the tracks If You Leave, written for Pretty In Pink, Tesla Girls in Weird Science.

Perhaps inevitably they ran out of steam at the end of the 80s and Andy split up the group he had formed with Paul Humphreys. He continued with a new line-up for the much-praised Sugar Tax album which spawned major hit Sailing On The Seven Seas.

After a decade in exile, he felt the time was right to put the old band back together again.

There are of course plenty more projects in the pipeline including working with celebrated Joy Division album cover artist Peter Saville from Factory Records, who also produced artwork for one of their singles). They will be working on producing a soundscape to an installation at the Liverpool Capital of Culture exhibitions, intriguingly based on nuclear power stations.

Then there’s another sideline with the London Philharmonic Orchestra for good measure. But not before they’ve dealt with their touring commitments.

"It’s all looking very good right now, we’ve been rehearsing more than we have ever done before and are sounding great.

"We are really excited about the tour. It should be really good- I played live for the first time in 13 years ago, I was bricking myself. My kids came to see the show in Germany and they thought it was hilarious!"

Other-worldly, yet equally enchanting, fans young and old will not want to miss one of the most adventurous acts of the last 30 years in action. They may not be youngsters anymore, but their songs have held up impressively over the passage of time.

* OMD play the London Hammersmith Apollo on Friday, May 18/19. and Brighton Dome on Friday, June 28. Tickets £27.60. Box office 0870 400 0688 or www.livenation.co.uk