Dave Ball Finished the Album’s Mixes Two Days Before His Death at Age 66
Soft Cell, the English synth-pop duo formed in Leeds, consisted of vocalist Marc Almond and multi-instrumentalist and producer Dave Ball. The two met as art students at Leeds Polytechnic in 1977, formed the band in 1979, and went on to top the UK singles chart with “Tainted Love” in 1981, reaching number one in 17 countries. The duo sold over 21 million records and placed four albums in the UK top 20 between 1981 and 1984. They split that year, reunited for Cruelty Without Beauty in 2002, staged a farewell show at London’s O2 Arena in 2018 before 20,000 fans, and returned with *Happiness Not Included in 2022, which reached the UK top ten and topped the UK dance chart.
Artist: Soft Cell
Release Date: 2026-09-25
Genres: Electronica, Pop, Synth Pop
Label: Republic of Music
Description: Soft Cell release Danceteria September 25 via Republic of Music. Their sixth and final album, completed by Dave Ball two days before his death in October 2025.
Featured image: © Mike Owen
Danceteria, their sixth and final studio album, will be released on September 25, 2026, via Republic of Music. It is named after the three-story nightclub that opened in 1980 in an old industrial building on West 21st Street in Manhattan. The record takes as its central subject the period Almond and Ball spent in New York in the early 1980s, when they recorded Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret (1981), Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing, and The Art of Falling Apart at Mediasound in Hell’s Kitchen, a studio where T. Rex had also recorded. The sessions for those albums overlapped with regular appearances at the Danceteria club, where the duo encountered Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Cindy Ecstasy, DJ Mark Kamins, and a young Madonna. Almond also visited Warhol at the Factory and drank margaritas at the Rainbow Room. The duo launched Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret with a Times Square-themed party at the Danceteria club. Almond lived in New York periodically over 25 years from the early 1980s.
The album was written remotely: Ball produced the instrumental tracks at his South London studio and sent the files to Almond, who recorded vocals with engineer Jonny Solway and backing vocalists Louise Marshall, Bryan Chambers, and Simon King at Dean Street Studios in Soho. Philip Larsen, Soft Cell‘s touring keyboardist and a Grammy-winning mixer who co-produced *Happiness Not Included, again co-produced alongside the duo. Ball completed the final mixes two days before his death on October 22, 2025, at age 66, two months after Soft Cell headlined the Rewind Festival in Henley-on-Thames before over 20,000 fans.
The album opens with the title track, preceded by a spoken-word ambient introduction titled “Intro,” and closes with “Out Come the Freaks,” a cover of the 1981 Was (Not Was) track originally released on ZE Records. Soft Cell‘s version features Ball on vocals and a guest contribution from Nona Hendryx, formerly of Labelle and herself a regular at the original Danceteria. Other tracks include “Wave To America,” “Heaven (When I Dance With You)” (described as a northern soul homage), “The Space Inside,” “Times Square,” “The Rainbow Room,” “Losing Yourself,” and “After Hours.” Warhol is the subject of “Polaroid” on the duo’s previous album, *Happiness Not Included; the new album’s connection to that period is further underscored by a track referencing the Rainbow Room at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, which Almond describes in detail.
The title track was previously released in extended form on a limited white 12″ vinyl for Record Store Day 2026, alongside a house rework by Mark Moore and Dan Donovan and a dub version. A video for the track was made by collage artist Vicki Bennett. The album runs to 12 tracks on vinyl and CD, with the CD version expanded to 14 tracks with two bonus tracks, “Crackland” and “What Is Your Morality.”
Almond has stated that there will be no further Soft Cell recordings: “There can be no more recordings of Soft Cell without Dave, it would not be possible. 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.”
This summer, Marc Almond is performing as Soft Cell on the Generations Tour in North America alongside The Human League and Alison Moyet, running from June 2 to July 2, 2026.
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