Soft Cell
Non - Stop Erotic Cabaret

The non-stop erotic cabaret by the award-winning duo Marc Almond - Dave Ball is undeniably one of the most exciting expressions of 80s techno-pop, although it is mostly known for the cover of the classic soul "Tainted Love." Yet it is precisely in this album that some of the most original sound solutions of pop in that decade find their space. What was the secret of the formula that – by popularizing many insights from Suicide and Kraftwerk for the mainstream audience – was nevertheless captivating enough to shine on its own? Dave Ball was the mind. A brilliant multi-instrumentalist in love with northern soul, as well as a skillful weaver of synthesizer textures, at times symphonic, at times hi-nrg. In tracks like "Frustration," "Secret Life," "Entertain Me," and the already mentioned "Tainted Love," his icy keyboards trace ruthless funk trajectories, which would become one of the keys to the sound of the newly begun decade (Martin Gore and Neil Tennant will have their ears ringing...). Marc Almond was the arm. An expressive and over-the-top performer like few others, he literally molds the shape of the songs with his vivid lyricism and with the uncomfortable homosexual imagery he references.

The album title is symptomatic, being the name of a nightclub in Soho, and the music sounds like the soundtrack of a journey into a red-light district. Chronicles of ordinary depravity in pre-Thatcher and pre-Aids United Kingdom, between nightclubbing and porn cinemas. Emblematic in this sense is the hi-nrg march "Sex Dwarf," with Almond languidly repeating "Isn't it nice/Sugar and spice/Luring disco dollies to a life of vice?". Or the panting "Seedy Films," where Almond stages a bizarre Lou-Reed-like skit with the cry of "feeling sleazy in sleepy sin city". A stunning episode in capturing the scent of sex, sweat, and physicality from soul music and adapting it to the synthetic sound of the '80s. The protagonist of this tasty role-play is almost always the frustrated and repressed middle-class bourgeoisie on the loose ("Frustration" indeed, "Secret Life" and "Say Hello Wave Goodbye," another famous single). It is instead heartbreaking the more intimate homosexual microcosm to which Almond refers: that of a teenager desperately chasing his youth ("Bedsitter," the keeper of the bedsitting mark that would make Morrissey's fortunes), only to see it fade like a grain of sand from his hand ("Youth"). These tracks form the apex of the album, with Ball's symphonic interweaving perfectly emphasizing Almond's pathos: "Dancing laughing Drinking loving/ And now I'm all alone In bedsit land/ My only home" or "Youth has gone/ And don't think I don't cry /We let ourselves slip/ And now I ask myself why I'm on my own" are illuminating glimpses in this sense. It's precisely this lyricism - reminiscent of punk urgency - that gives the Soft Cell cabaret that something extra that makes it shine 25 years after its release. Not only in a sea of similar works that haven't been able to overcome the inevitable obsolescence of records based on electronic sounds, but also compared to many electronic works of the past decade, whose authors already seem to have fallen into oblivion.