Heaven 17 has long been more of a studio entity than a live vehicle. The group, which formed in 1980, didn’t perform live until 1997. And now, 36 years after the release of their debut Penthouse and Pavement, Martyn Ware and Glenn Gregory finally will bring H17 to America for a pair of long-awaited concerts next month.

Vince Clarke and Martyn Ware teamed up in the late ’90s to record a pair of atmospheric albums under the moniker The Clarke & Ware Experiment. Now, a dozen years later, they’ve paired those two albums with eight CDs of unreleased material to create a limited-edition box set called The House of Illustrious.

As part of EMI Music’s ongoing Electrospective campaign designed to celebrate the history of electronic music, Mojo magazine recently convened a roundtable discussion of the genre featuring, among others, synthpop pioneers such as Mute Records; Daniel Miller, Heaven 17’s Martyn Ware and OMD’s Andy McCluskey.

Synthpop pioneers Heaven 17 — Martyn Ware and Glenn Gregory — will follow up last fall’s first-ever front-to-back performances of their1983 album ‘The Luxury Gap’ by mounting a nine-date U.K. tour this October and November that’ll find the group playing the record in its entirety each night.

Heaven 17 will perform its 1983 album ‘The Luxury Gap’ in its entirety for the first time this fall in London when the band stages a two-day festival with its experimental spinoff B.E.F. — an event that will feature Erasure’s Andy Bell, Midge Ure, Scritti Politti’s Green Gartside and Boy George.

Last fall, Heaven 17 released a 2DVD set called ‘Penthouse and Pavement: Live in Concert 2010’ — and if you haven’t seen it yet, now’s your chance to win an autographed copy from Slicing Up Eyeballs.

The expanded 2CD/1DVD reissue of Heaven 17’s synthpop classic ‘Penthouse and Pavement’ will pair the remastered 1981 album with 20 previously unreleased ‘demos, instrumentals and experimentation’ from that era, plus a DVD featuring the hour-long documentary ‘The Story of Penthouse and Pavement.’