Photo credit: Mike Owen
Electronic music legends, Soft Cell (singer/frontman Marc Almond and multi-instrumentalist/producer Dave Ball), have just released their new single, “The Space Inside.” It is taken from their forthcoming, sixth and final album, Danceteria, set for release September 25, via Republic of Music records. Check it out below.
Pre-order Danceteria here: https://republicofmusic.lnk.to/Danceteriaalbum
Marc provides a snapshot into the album:
“Danceteria is a love letter to New York in the early ’80s. The time we spent in New York – where we recorded our first three albums – shaped us both as artists and people. To celebrate this period is a fitting farewell to Dave Ball and the final Soft Cell studio album.”
Released digitally on all platforms today, “The Space Inside” is an escapist pop anthem featuring majestic vocals from Marc Almond and epic ravey synths from Dave Ball. “The Space Inside” transports us back to the queer leather bars and sex clubs of Manhattan’s Meatpacking District in the early ’80s, where the city’s night owls find themselves “searching for redemption in the night’s decay.”
This track directly contrasts with previous single “In Heaven (When I Dance With You),” a lighter summery poppy cut from Danceteria with a feelgood, kitschy video by collage artist Vicki Bennett, starring Marc and Dave performing on a heavenly dancefloor and floating with synths through the clouds.
A big, classy and playful farewell to 47 years of Marc and Dave making music as Soft Cell, Danceteria features career-defining performances from the electronic pop legends. Reminiscent of Sparks, Pet Shop Boys and with lyrics Lady Gaga would kill for, the album takes you on a vivid journey through a day in early ’80s New York, bouncing round the clock from night to bleary daybreak and headlong back into the club. The 12-track album is available to pre-order now on vinyl and CD, with the CD expanding to 14 tracks including two bonus tracks, “Crackland” and “What Is Your Morality.”
Equally a tribute to the late, great Dave Ball who unfortunately passed away on October 22, 2025, Danceteria is one of the last bodies of work Ball co-wrote and produced before his death. Almond led the obituaries, describing Dave as a “brilliant musical genius.” The world’s media followed, hailing him as an electronic music pioneer, plus music stars including Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe from the Pet Shop Boys, Mute Records‘ Daniel Miller, Cabaret Voltaire and Richard Norris from Dave’s techno duo The Grid contributing an outpouring of elegiac praise. Dave finished Danceteria two days before he passed away and it is in full tribute to him that the album release went ahead as planned.
“There can be no more recordings of Soft Cell without Dave, it would not be possible,” explained Almond. “The sad reality is that Dave Ball was half of Soft Cell, and live work aside, I can’t write Soft Cell songs without him.”
The new single follows on from last month’s launch including “Danceteria” as the lead single (watch the dazzling discotastic video made by artist Vicki Bennett: ), the joyous, celebratory burst of disco pop album opener. It is Soft Cell at their very best, with Almond’s iconic vocals soaring over Ball’s masterful John Barry-esque minor chord progressions. There couldn’t be a more fitting disco banger to pull back the dusty velvet curtain and beckon you into the heady, romantic and deliciously dark world of Danceteria.
This summer, Marc Almond will be playing a series of UK solo shows, with the next one happening with Gary Numan and Ladytron at Crystal Palace Bowl, London, on August 6th. Marc will be touring as Soft Cell throughout November, kicking off on November 8th in San Diego and taking in Darker Waves festival in California on November 14th (full listings and tickets are here). This follows on from a special guest spot for The Human League at Ludlow Castle, Shropshire, last month, and five weeks of touring as Soft Cell in North America on the Generations Tour with The Human League and Alison Moyet at the start of the summer season.
Nov 8 San Diego, CA The Magnolia
Nov 10 Napa, CA Uptown Theatre
Nov 11 San Francisco, CA The Regency Ballroom
Nov 13 Reno, NV Grand Sierra Resort/Casino
Nov 14 Huntington Beach, CA Darker Waves
Nov 15 San Luis Obispo, CA Fremont Theater
Named for the legendary Manhattan nightclub where young Marc and Dave would party until the small hours after the recording sessions for their seminal 1981 debut Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, Danceteria revisits the life-changing moment for the two art school students from Leeds Polytechnic. Almond and Ball stepped into a world of unbridled creativity and total self-expression in New York, swiftly fitting in and making friends with the most up for it in-crowd at Danceteria.
Mirroring its eclectic musical style, Danceteria provided a home for party people from all walks of life, sexualities and recreational appetites, drawn together by the desire to simply be themselves. More than most, the queer community thrived under the discoball lights, falling in and out of love and dancing until dawn – essential solidarity against well-worn societal prejudices and the existential threat from the burgeoning AIDS epidemic.
Within these sweaty club walls, Marc saw Madonna‘s first ever performance on the Danceteria floor, following a hot tip by a certain Seymour Stein – a moment the queen of pop is also playing tribute to on her own new album Confessions On A Dance Floor: Part II. During that time, Marc and Dave also met Andy Warhol a few times, the subject of “Polaroid” on Soft Cell’s fifth studio album, 2022’s *Happiness not included. The duo recorded their second album 1982’s The Art of Falling Apart and the majority of third album 1984’s This Last Night In Sodom in NYC, working with engineer and producer Mike Thorne at Mediasound for the first two and Dave Ball producing the third. Additionally, Marc Almond lived in New York periodically over 25 years from the early ’80s.
“Soft Cell have always had a strong connection with New York, and my Soft Cell lyrics often look at America through British eyes,” says Marc. “New York in the 1980s was a particularly creative place for me. It was a pivotal era in terms of changes in my personal life and changes in the city itself. New York shaped Soft Cell, as it opened up a whole new world of possibilities. It was dirty, dark and dangerous – a real Wild West – but it was also deeply inspiring and exciting. A lot of our original influences came from America anyway: New York punk, Devo, Suicide, Lou Reed, disco and 1960s soul. But New York was like nowhere else on earth. There were 24-hour nightclubs, music, art and underground theatre. It offered a cornucopia of energy and edge, and the lyrics on ‘Danceteria’ reflect that time of my life.”
Danceteria is a love letter to the cultural vibrancy of New York in the 1980s, it’s a fitting tribute to Soft Cell’s creative inception in NYC, Dave’s pioneering electronic genius and an outrageously great, 47-year musical career as one of Britain’s trailblazing sonic forces.
With the untimely death of Dave Ball in 2025, the band’s sixth and final album, the much anticipated Danceteria, finally arrives September 25, 2026.
Danceteria tracklisting
Vinyl
Side A:
1) Elusive (Vinyl Edit)
2) Danceteria
3) The Space Inside (Vinyl Edit)
4) Times Square (Vinyl Edit)
5) Two Of A Kind
6) The Rainbow Room (Vinyl Edit)
7) In Heaven (When I Dance With You)
Side B:
1) Decadence Is Hard Work
2) Losing Yourself
3) After Hours
4) Wave To America
5) Out Come The Freaks
CD:
1) Elusive
2) Danceteria
3) The Space Inside
4) Times Square
5) Two Of A Kind
6) The Rainbow Room
7) In Heaven (When I Dance With You)
8) Decadence Is Hard Work
9) Crackland
10) What Is Your Morality
11) Losing Yourself
12) After Hours
13) Wave To America
14) Out Come The Freaks
Follow Soft Cell:
https://www.softcell.co.uk/
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