Soft Cell

Soft Cell were a British electronic pop music duo formed in Leeds in the late 1970s by fellow art students Dave Ball and Marc Almond. After gaining a reputation as a live act and after issuing various independent recordings, they came to prominence in pop culture thanks to the success of their single Tainted Love/Where Did Our Love Go? which became the UK's best selling single of 1981.

History
The two band members Marc Almond (b.1957, vocals) and Dave Ball (b. 1959, synthesisers, electronic percussion) met at Leeds Polytechnic in the late 1970s. As a musical duo, they developed a cult following with their performances which routinely included bizarre sexual imagery and visuals representing sexual themes, often explicitly depicted by singer Almond. Ball's minimal synth compositions and arrangements were influenced by the darker electronic music artists of the time such as Suicide and Throbbing Gristle, while maintaining an interest in British Northern Soul and Kraftwerk. A debut 1980 independent release, a 4-track EP entitled Mutant Moments, caught the attention of alternative music impresario Stevo who signed them to his Some Bizarre label. The legendary Some Bizarre Album, released in early 1981, featured a new Soft Cell track The Girl With the Patent Leather Face (as well as tracks by future pop successes such as Depeche Mode, Blancmange and The The). Stevo then negotiated a deal with major label Phonogram in order to fund the duo’s first single proper. Their next single, still on Some Bizarre (cat. no. HARD 1), recorded in December 1980 and produced by Daniel Miller, featured two new tracks A Man Can Get Lost and Memorabilia. As electronic dance and pop music was gaining momentum, the latter track achieved some radio play and as an extended version on 12" became a club hit, although failed to chart. Writing in Sounds, reviewer Betty Page described Soft Cell's latest release as, "Cool as a mountain stream and just as refreshing". Despite the lack of a commerical brakethrough, Phonogram gave another chance to achieve chart success, and it was decided to release a single with two cover versions: Tainted Love, a little-known Northern Soul song, originally recorded by Gloria Jones in 1964 (released in 1965) and the more well-known Where Did Our Love Go? originally recorded and released by The Supremes in 1964. Soft Cell's versions of both were stripped back minimalist interpretations using electronic instruments only but coupled with Almond's soulful vocals proved a winning formula at a time when "synth-pop" was beginning to become popular. Contemporaneous singles include Depeche Mode's New Life, Love Action (I Believe In Love) by The Human League and Souvenir by OMD. The Soft Cell single, issued as both 7" and 12" featuring an extended dance version seguing the two songs and a 'dub' version of the same (a similar method used by The Human League for Hard Times/Love Action) entered the Top 40 in the UK at no.26 in the week of 09 August, duly supported by a debut appearance on Top of the Pops on 13 August which boosted the single up to no.9 the following week. By the end of the month it had reached no.2 (held off the top by Japanese Boy by Aneka) although reached the top spot in the first chart of September, remaining there for one further week before slowly going back down again, and remaining on the Top 40 until the first week of November.  The follow-up single Bedsitter b/w Facility Girls reached no.4 in the UK, heralded the release of the duo's debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, "a love letter to Soho" focusing on the darker and seedier side of society and club culture. The album made slow progress in the charts, eventually peaking at no.5 in February 1982, contending with albums such as The Human League's Dare, Architecture & Morality by OMD and a revived 1978 album The Man Machine by Kraftwerk, as synth-pop was at its height. A final single from Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, the ballad Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, also peaked at no.3 in February.

Two more Top 5 singles followed in 1982: an original composition Torch reached no.2 (held off the top by Adam Ant's Goody Two Shoes) and another cover version What!, which reached no.3, a full year after Tainted Love's initial success. During the summer of 1982 Soft Cell also released a remix album entitled Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing, a low-price compilation of some of the duo's previous recordings "Remixed and Rethought" (again similar to the contemporaneous Human League's Love and Dancing released under the name of The League Unlimited Orchestra).

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Radio

 * BBC Radio 1 sessions: 03 August 1981 (Richard Skinner), 10 February 1983 (David Jensen)