On 14 January 2013, the band announced details of the album release date, track listing, and a teaser video featuring the short Dazzle Ships-esque track "Decimal". The album was released on CD, deluxe CD+DVD, heavyweight vinyl LP, a collector's tin boxset, and digitally. The track "Kissing the Machine" was originally featured on the 1993 album Esperanto by Elektric Music, a project by Karl Bartos after he left Kraftwerk. The track, co-written with Andy McCluskey, was completely reworked by Paul Humphreys for English Electric, and features Claudia Brücken as the voice of the machine. The track "Stay With Me" features Humphreys on vocals for the first time since the release of 1988 "Dreaming" B-side "Gravity Never Failed". The video for "Atomic Ranch" premiered on Pitchfork Media on 4 February 2013. The video is the second of three animations by Henning M. Lederer which will be available on the bonus DVD of English Electric. The lead single "Metroland" premiered on the BBC Radio 6 Music radio show Radcliffe & Maconie on 11 February 2013. The B-side to "Metroland" is a non-album track titled "The Great White Silence". The full album was made available to stream on on 2 April 2013. For Record Store Day 2013, on 20 April, a 500-copy limited edition 10-inch picture disc EP of "The Future Will Be Silent" was made available, which includes an exclusive non-album track titled "Time Burns". "Dresden" was released as the second single from the album on 17 May 2013. The promo video was premiered on the New York Times website a week earlier on 10 May 2013. The single bundle features a remix by John Foxx And The Maths who also supported OMD on the UK part of their English Electric Tour.
Reception
English Electric has received generally favourable reviews. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 76, based on 15 reviews. An Express writer commented, "That synthpop of theirs is still thumping and penetrating, catchy and crazy and brilliantly familiar. It's fresh and it's pretty wow." Thomas H. Green of The Arts Desk noted, "...History of Modern, tipped its hat to all OMD's musical incarnations and was a mixed bag, if occasionally pleasing. Their new one, however, returns to their pristine synth-pop roots and is a corker." Irish Times critic Tony Clayton-Lea felt the record borrowed from Kraftwerk, but wrote: "What drags it out of the homage/pastiche area is the song craft, which is so ridiculously accomplished that you have no option but to whistle from start to finish."
Track listing
;Notes
"Final Song" contains samples from "Lonely House" as performed by Abbey Lincoln.
Personnel
Credits for English Electric adapted from the liner notes. ;Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
