Electronic music pioneers Soft Cell announce a super deluxe reissue of their classic 1983 album ‘The Art Of Falling Apart’ on the 31st October 2025 via Universal Music. Soft Cell’s – aka singer and frontman Marc Almond and multi-instrumentalist and producer Dave Ball – second album is freshly remastered by Barry Grint from the original tapes and shows off the feted duo’s gothic take on pop music in all its full, darkly textured glory. Following directly on from 1982’s seminal one-of-the-first remix albums ‘Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing’, ‘The Art Of Falling Apart’ reached No. 5 on the UK charts. As befits an album celebrating difference and choosing art over the glitzy 80s pop dream, ‘The Art Of Falling Apart’ gloriously twists and turns between anger, frustration and destruction to beauty, reflection and unity. Part of the emerging gothic movement of the early 1980s, the album spans the epic, spiralling intensity of the title track and the terrifyingly great Romero-inspired synth stabs of ‘Martin’ to the uplifting anthem of ‘Where The Heart Is’, epic bittersweet ballad ‘Loving You Hating Me’ and the poignant single ‘Numbers’.
‘The Art of Falling Apart’ burst out of a period of pressure from then-label Phonogram to follow the rapid pop success of 1981 debut ‘Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret’ and its chart-topping singles ‘Tainted Love’, ‘What’, ‘Bedsitter’ and ‘Say Hello Wave Goodbye’. The reality of international pop stardom for two art students from Northern England was unwelcome and, frankly, uncomfortable. ‘We had an indie mentality,’ explains Dave. ‘We got together at the tail-end of punk. I was originally just making music for Marc to do some performance art. He had heard my weird noises and bleeps coming out of the college music room and popped in. I did some music for him, and he then asked me what else I had. So I played him these odd, mutant pop tunes I’d been writing, and he asked if he could sing on them. I’d tried doing the vocals myself, but I’m not a singer. Marc sang them and, almost by accident, we found ourselves as a duo. It spiralled into Soft Cell from there.’
Marc continues: ‘Our attitude at the time of ‘The Art Of Falling Apart’ might have alienated some of our younger and more middle-of-the-road fans, but we were being honest with ourselves. Dave was listening to lots of new music. He was revisiting his soundtrack influences and electronic roots. I’d been going to The Batcave, the club in Soho, and was hanging out with Nick Cave and Siouxsie Sioux. I’d sung on a Psychic TV album and performed live in the collaborative band The Immaculate Consumptive with Nick Cave, Lydia Lunch and Clint Ruin. I was an art-school punk who enjoyed experimentation and confrontation, and all of that came to the fore on this record.’
1-1. Forever The Same
1-2. Where The Heart Is
1-3. Numbers
1-4. Heat
1-5. Kitchen Sink Drama
1-6. Baby Doll
1-7. Loving You, Hating Me
1-8. The Art Of Falling Apart
1-9. Martin
1-10. Hendrix Medley
1-11. It's A Mug's Game (7" Version)
1-12. Barriers (7" Version)
1-13. Loving You, Hating Me (Special Mix)
2-1. Ghost Rider (New 2025 Version)
2-2. Where The Heart Is (Original 12" Version)
2-3. It's A Mug's Game (Dave Ball 2025 Re-Eq Version)
2-4. Numbers (Original 12" Version)
2-5. Barriers (Original 12" Version)
2-6. Loving You, Hating Me (Original 12" Version)
2-7. Forever The Same (Original 12" Version)
2-8. Heat (US Single Edit)
2-9. Where The Heart Is (Live At The Hammersmith Apollo, UK, 2021)
2-10. Numbers (Live At O2, 2018)
2-11. It’s A Mug’s Game (Live At Hammersmith Palais, 1983)
