WHAT do The Specials and The Human League – the two bands who defined 1981 with Ghost Town and Dare respectively – have in common? Bizarrely, neither had ever played York until this autumn when they have each performed to a full house with all but the balcony seating removed.

On November 1, The Specials were down to three original members, supplemented by strings, brass etc, as the scarred ska songs of their generation resonated anew in post-Brexit, Can't Fix It Britain.

On Thursday, The Human League were still the crucial three from Dare, the tall boy and the fun girls, 35 years on, Phil's hair gone, their industrial Sheffield songs of love action serving as a party antidote to the bitter-pill politics of Terry Hall's gruel-Britannia Coventry crew.

Where The Specials' focus had been solely on re-energising the songs of more than three decades ago, no modern frills, just blood, sweat and beers, The Human League always loved to dress up for the night: ever the glam, not grim, Northerners. Like the trendier, arthouse Pet Shop Boys, the precision-tooled electronics have improved with the technological times, sounding better than ever in concert, while the shows have grown more theatrical.

You wouldn't dare call Thursday's ultra-contemporary show the work of a heritage act, even if Dare supplied six of the set's 20 songs. Instead it was a thoroughly 21st century portrait of A Very British Synthesizer Group with a new career-spanning box set of that name to promote.

Oakey entered alone, lean, shaven headed, in dark smock and boots – The King And I with a sci-fi fashion makeover – as behind him the triple-decker bank of screens bled angry red imagery of dropped bombs for Being Boiled, the pre-Dare sound of the future with its Orwellian vision of slaughter and blind revenge. Phil's baritone hasn't been this richly sonorous in years.

On swished those dancing-on-the-spot disco divas, Susan Ann Sulley in silver and Joanne Catherall in black, to flank Oakey for The Sound Of The Crowd; the screens now showing a gallery of gargoyle grotesques, where political heads transformed into animals, not least moving from Cameron to a hog. Here was early evidence that every detail had been thought out meticulously for the marriage of sound and vision, choreographed both elegantly and eloquently.

Where was a band in all this? Ah, that's where, as Oakey took to the stairs and the middle panel of the screens dissolved to reveal a mezzanine with three men in suits, two behind keyboards, the third, the percussionist.

A trio of lesser lights (Sky from 2011's Credo, Heart Like A Wheel and Filling Up With Heaven) came and went proficiently before the night got on an unstoppable roll, as the foreboding duo of Seconds and The Lebanon were followed by a melodious trio of love stories, One Man In My Heart, Human and Louise.

Oakey regularly changed cutting-edge attire and stage position; the familiar call-and-response vocals charmed, and although Joanne's voice wavered in (Keep Feeling) Fascination and Mirror Man, Susan's cocktail waitress was as stirred, not shaken, as ever in Don't You Want Me.

A "Dream" double formed the encore – another sharp piece of planning – wherein the list song The Things That Dreams Are Made Of gave way to Together In Electric Dreams, closing a retro yet still futuristic night where a very British synthesizer group had brought everyone together in electro dreams.