Issue 108

We've got Soft Cell on the cover of this month's Electronic Sound and we're packaging the magazine with an exclusive red vinyl seven-inch featuring demo versions of 'Tainted Love' and 'Bedsitter' produced by Mute supremo Daniel Miller. 

The focus of our interview with Marc Almond and Dave Ball is ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’, Soft Cell's glorious debut album. It's a record that defiantly set the tone of the early 1980s and it’s just been reissued as an expanded double LP and a six-CD boxset, both editions loaded up with tons of fantastic extras. As well as delving deep into the heart of the album, which Almond describes as “mundanity with a technicolour touch – glamour in squalor” in the boxset notes, the pair talk about their art-school beginnings and their ongoing working relationship. It’s a scintillating read and a great way for us to bring this year to an end.     

We have plenty of other good stuff for you too, including chats with iconic film director and composer John Carpenter, former Radiophonic Workshop synthesist Elizabeth Parker, the perpetually cool Chris & Cosey, and pop star par excellence Howard Jones. We also have multimedia artist Aho Ssan and analogue dreamscaper Hinako Omori, plus a rare interview with eclectic producer Sam Shackleton. And as this is the last Electronic Sound of 2023, there's our Albums Of The Year round-up as well. As always, you'll probably find a few surprises on the list. Will any of your favourite records make it on there?  

To accompany the magazine, we have a superb seven-inch featuring early demo versions of 'Tainted Love' and 'Bedsitter', Soft Cell's first two hit singles. The demos were recorded shortly after the group had signed with Some Bizarre Records and they were produced by Mute boss Daniel Miller. “Marc and I had been fans of Daniel for a while," explains Dave Ball. "We were friends with Frank Tovey – we went to the same college as him – and we’d seen that Frank’s first record had come out on Mute and was produced by Daniel. We also loved The Normal’s ‘TVOD’, so we thought, ‘This guy seems to be the man to talk to’, and started desperately hunting him down”.

As with all our music releases, this seven-inch is strictly limited and is only available to readers of Electronic Sound, so be sure to get your copy straight away.