Legendary ska combo The Specials celebrate their 40th anniversary and first new music for 37 years with huge shows in Plymouth and Exeter in 2019.

The gigs mark the 40th anniversary of the formation of The Specials and the iconic 2 Tone label in Coventry in 1979, and also marks 10 years since they reformed to play some of the most vital and joyous live shows in recent memory.

The new 10-song Encore album was produced by Specials founding members Terry Hall, Lynval Golding and Horace Panter alongside Danish musician-producer Torp Larsen and is the first time Hall, Golding and Panter have recorded new material together since the band's 1981 number one single Ghost Town.

As well as new material, Encore will include a cover of The Equals' Black Skinned Blue-Eyed Boys and a version of Blam Blam Fever.

The record, due out in February 2019, will also include a second disc, titled The Best Of The Specials Live.

Who are The Specials and why are they famous?

While The Specials' sudden meteoric rise to fame saw them clock up five Top 10 singles and two number ones in the years between 1979 and 1981, helping to spawn the 2 Tone movement in the process, they split up at the very height of their success, allegedly in the dressing room of Top Of The Pops, when Ghost Town reached number one.

Members of the band had always been resistant to a Specials reunion, but nothing they did subsequently as individuals – even the briefly successful Fun Boy Three – had ever matched up.

Over the years frontman Terry Hall's feelings gradually softened and it was apparently after witnessing the reunited Pixies live that he and Lynval Golding mooted a possible reunion.

Bass player Horace Panter had been teaching art to special needs students for many years when he got the call to say The Specials were reforming. There was no hesitation when the time came to take up where they left off.

The Specials are heading to Plymouth and Exeter in 2019

"I think the music must have been ingrained in my DNA," he said at the time. "When we got back together it was like putting on an old pair of slippers – all the songs came back instantly and we just slotted back in to it. Quite extraordinary really."

Their first foray onto the live arena for 30 years was at Bestival in 2008, where they played unannounced. The response was overwhelming and the rest is, of course, history.

"It's obvious that when we're standing together there is a definite chemistry," said Terry Hall at the time. "That's something I wanted again in my life."

What is 2 Tone?

It's a style of music that mixes ska with punk rock. It's named after 2 Tone Records, the record label founded by the Specials' Jerry Dammers in 1979, and references a desire to transcend the racial tensions of Thatcher's Britain. In its heyday, 2 Tone Records signed future ska legends Selecter, Madness and The Beat.

The Specials visit Plymouth Pavilions on April 19, 2019, and Exeter University Great Hall on April 20, 2019