Not many bands can boast of being together, in the same unchanging eight-strong line-up, for 28 years.

Still fewer can also lay claim to selling more than 70 million albums and singles, scoring more hit singles than any other British act aside from Status Quo and being the first act to get a dub album into the UK top 40.

UB40 is the eight-piece band best known for the huge number one singles Red Red Wine, I Got You Babe and (I Can't Help) Falling In Love With You.

Now the band is returning to its dub roots as part of this tour by offering fans a new limited edition album, simply entitled Dub.

"Dub is something we all love doing," says UB40's bassist Earl Falconer. "We used to call ourselves the Jazz Dub Reggae Band."

For the uninitiated, dub is an instrumental form of Jamaican music that evolved from reggae, which generally doesn't contain vocals and has emphasis on bass, drums and effects created by delay boxes and echo chambers.

"Ali (Campbell, UB40's vocalist) always wanted us to be a dub band," says Earl.

"He always wanted to play drums, but he had such a good voice he had to be a singer. You get a lot of vibrato going on if you try to play drums and sing, and we had a great drummer with Jimmy Brown anyway."

The group's return to dub is part of their decision to go back to largely live instrumentation on their latest releases, including next album 24/7, due out next year.

"For years we used a lot of technology," says Earl. "On the last couple of albums we have gone back to basics, doing room jams and rearranging the tunes that way.

"We recorded it live to get that live feeling.

It is a lot more enjoyable when you get the interaction."

The other problem the band faced when using too much technology was how to recreate their records on stage.

As Earl puts it: "If you record it live from the beginning it will work on stage."

He feels 24/7 shows a band that has got better not only at recording but also at songwriting.

Anyone who thinks UB40 are just about the reggae covers collected on their three Labour Of Love albums are forgetting their early political roots.

Debut album Signing Off, songs like One In Ten, and the name UB40 itself - which comes from an unemployment benefit form - show the band to be a much more political animal.

"We are just as p***ed off as we were at the beginning - it is just different subjects,"

says Earl.

"We still have a lot of the same problems going on, and we have the Iraq war and the New Orleans floods.

"There might be a few love songs in there somewhere, too. Nobody wants to be bombarded with political statements."

Despite 28 years working together, and another ten years as school friends, the band has never lost any of its founder members.

"The years have flown by," says Earl.

"It's weird when you see old photographs of when we first started out. It only seems like ten years ago.

"We are still pretty hard-working. We always work for at least four or five months of the year."

It hasn't stopped the band from following solo routes, with Ali releasing his second solo album this month and both Earl and Jimmy releasing their own dub albums last year.

"I have is a drum 'n' bass label on the side,"

says Earl. "Brian Travers, saxophonist does music for Disney. There's time to do other things now, whereas back in the day it was all UB40. It's like a release."

UB40 have always had total artistic control - a boon in the turbulent times of today's music industry. They have never signed to a major, releasing everything but their debut on their own Dep International label.

"We have been really lucky," says Earl.

"We never really loved record companies or that world you have got to deal with.

"It is better now, in a way, with the internet - as there are more chances of being discovered by real people rather than A&R men. The downside with downloading is it is kind of killing us a bit.

"It will work its way out, though. You've got to adapt to the business. We are a live band so we do all right."

  • Starts 7pm, tickets £29.50, call 0870 9009100.