Soft Cell

Soft Cell bids goodbye on 'Danceteria,' half nostalgia trip, half morphine dream

Soft Cell’s swan song, ‘Danceteria,’ takes an unexpected detour through the final morphine-laced reveries of co-founder Dave Ball, who passed away days after wrapping the album with Marc Almond. The record is equal parts digital hallucination and nostalgia trip, conjured from Ball’s hospital-bed disorientation and high-rise perspective overlooking London.

Pitched as both a flashback to 1980s New York and a haunted farewell, the album reworks the duo’s mythology into one last sideways glance at their past mischief and mutual beginnings.