Soft Cell have unveiled two new remixes of Nostalgia Machine, lifted from their Top 10 LP, ‘*Happiness Not Included’.
Following the ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’ super deluxe boxset announcement, the synth-pop pioneers have teamed up with the producers on a set of new mixes of the third single from the record.
Hifi Sean highlights the pulsing synths of the track over club-friendly beats, while Wally Funk – a young production duo from Mitte, Berlin – lend Italo disco influences to the tune.
Check out the Nostalgia Machine remix EP below.
Following the release of the companion pieces, ‘*Happiness Now Extended’ and ‘*Happiness Now Completed’, Soft Cell shared news of a massive expanded reissue of their seminal debut album.
Initially released in November 1981, the LP introduced Marc Almond and Dave Ball to the world and delivered such hits as Bedsitter, Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, and the massive Tainted Love.
In the words of Almond, the 10-song record “tells a story of a bored ordinary bloke seething with his life wanting more and looking for excitement and adventure in a red neon lit Soho world of red-light cabarets, prostitutes and sex dwarves, looking back at his youth and wondering what happened.”
“The album was the other side of the coin of Margaret Thatcher’s Britain: I never felt it was political at the time, but it seems it now,” he adds. “‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’ was the secret seedy life that went on behind the mask of Conservative Britain.”
Clocking in at six discs with various supplementary extras and rarities, the super deluxe version boasts the original remastered album along with 7” and 12” mixes, B-sides, demos, remixes, classic live performances, audio from the BBC archive and the LP played in full at at Hammersmith’s Eventim Apollo in November 2021. Forty of the tracks are previously-unreleased.
Meanwhile, a 2LP vinyl edition features the album plus its single mixes and B-sides.
Dave Ball recalls making the album as “all very weird and extreme, from living in a council flat and suddenly you’re flying on Concorde to New York”. He adds: “‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’ was the first period of Soft Cell, really. It was our pop period, and by 1982 we were done and dusted with that. The next one was much darker…”
‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’ is out October 20 on Mercury-EMI/UMR and available to pre-order now.
