EMF bring Schubert Dip back for six December nights

The run opens in Stockton-on-Tees on 7 December and closes in London on 13 December, with a Cherry Red deluxe edition of the 1991 debut due on 4 December and tickets already on sale.

EMF have announced a six-date UK tour for December, with each show built around two sets. The opening set will present their debut album Schubert Dip in full; the second will be a Best Of The Rest selection. The dates are: the Georgian Theatre, Stockton-on-Tees (7 December); The Crescent, York (8 December); Hebden Bridge Trades Club (9 December); Glasgow King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut (11 December); Gloucester Guildhall (12 December); and the 100 Club, London (13 December). Tickets are on sale through the band's website.

A deluxe reissue of Schubert Dip is due on 4 December via Cherry Red Records, three days before the tour opens. The band posted the news on their official channels on 1 October.

The debut that broke them

EMF are an English alternative rock band from Cinderford, Gloucestershire, who came to prominence at the beginning of the 1990s. During their initial eight-year run, from 1989 to 1997, the band released three studio albums before a hiatus. Their first single, "Unbelievable", reached number 3 on the UK Singles Chart and was a number 1 hit on the US Billboard Hot 100. Schubert Dip followed and went to number 3 on the UK Albums Chart.

That 1991 album remains the centrepiece of the December shows. Playing it complete restores the original running order and the sound that first carried the group into the charts, before the night turns to other material under the Best Of The Rest banner. For listeners who know the band through the big single as much as through the album tracks, the full-album set gives the debut a fixed place on stage again. The short itinerary — six nights in six venues, from 7 to 13 December — keeps the focus on the record and on the reissue arriving the same week.

From the first run to the present

Stigma arrived in 1992, the same year as the Unexplained EP, and Cha Cha Cha completed the original studio sequence in 1995. Compilations and remasters kept the early records in circulation through the years away from new work, among them a Best of Epsom Mad Funkers collection and later remastered editions of Stigma and Cha Cha Cha. In April 2022 the band released Go Go Sapiens, their first album of new material in 27 years. Releases have continued since, including the Hello People EP in 2023, Reach For The Lasers and the album The Beauty and the Chaos in 2024, and further singles and EPs into 2025.

The December tour follows festival and European dates the band played earlier in 2026. These six UK nights concentrate on the debut at the same moment the Cherry Red deluxe edition returns Schubert Dip to shelves in expanded form. The pairing of a full-album set with a second, looser selection gives the short run a clear shape: the record that defined the breakthrough first, then the rest of the catalogue. It is a live format that treats the debut as a complete work rather than a source of singles alone, and it coincides with the reissue, which puts the album back into print.

No further UK dates beyond 13 December in London have been announced. The reissue lands on 4 December; the opening night in Stockton-on-Tees is on 7 December, with the run closing six nights later.