Psychic TV Archives

As the half of Soft Cell charged with operating the machines, Dave Ball has played a crucial role in the popularisation of electronic pop music. With Ball leering on the keyboards and Marc Almond prowling with his microphone, Soft Cell was a futuristic panto made with equal measures of soul and sleaze. They looked like they were lifted from Soho but delivered in a spaceship, issuing melodic hooks like lighting bolts. They introduced the synth duo to the mainstream with their UK Number One, “Tainted Love”–a cover of the soul classic originally performed by Gloria Jones–and subverted all expectations from then on. Soft Cell came and went as an act, but Ball continued to innovate with experimental collaborations and dance music: from Psychic TV to Kylie, he has added electricity to the acts that followed in their footsteps.

Ball was raised in Blackpool, a town on Britain’s left coast that was also the hometown of Chris Lowe, his counterpart in the Pet Shop Boys. He left its faded seaside glamour to attend Leeds Polytechnic, where he met his future musical partner, Almond. They started working together in 1977, rescuing disco from the jaws of punk, and released their first EP, Mutant Moments, the next year using money from Ball’s mother. The result was more industrial/Suicide-influenced than anything that followed, but it caught the attention of the emerging electronic influencers in London. One of them was an eccentric DJ called Stevo, who built a relationship with the band that took them to major label heaven and global success. Another was Daniel Miller, who produced the act’s first singles, “A Man Could Get Lost” and “Memorabilia” for Stevo’s label, Some Bizarre.

Soft Cell’s success was rapid and quickly outgrew the creative relationship between Ball and Almond. Easy access to drugs didn’t help, and it had fallen apart by 1984. It would take until 2001 for the act to release new material, but the hiatus didn’t leave Ball without interesting projects. From a solo album in 1983 to the acid house craze, he always found relevant and creative personalities to work with. There were no publishing royalties from “Tainted Love,” due to a lack of foresight by Some Bizarre, but there were always new ideas to be explored. Soft Cell have now returned with new management, selling keychains and working with the Pet Shop Boys, but the ideas keep coming.

(Photo of Dave Ball by Peter Ashworth)

10. Soft Cell – Martin

As the Mutant Moments EP revealed, Soft Cell were not all sweetness and light. They were happy to explore themes of horror, mental illness and danger. Early copies of Soft Cell’s second album, The Art of Falling Apart, came with a bonus 12″ featuring this tribute to the George Romero film of the same name. Recording of the album had been difficult, and producer Mike Thorne recalled that “Martin” injected a sense of fun to the proceedings. He described it as “a monstrously over-the-top extravaganza,” and he wasn’t wrong. It was the aggressive, experimental spine that held the Soft Cell monster erect.

This is a live version, as performed on The Tube in 1983. As a bonus, we have included one of the bands most heavily influenced by Soft Cell, Psyche, performing a delicious cover version at a Cold War Night Life event.

9. M.E.S.H. – Meet Every Situation Head-On

Genesis P-Orridge was a counterculture figure with a distinctive presence in the 1980s. After Throbbing Gristle imploded, he founded Psychic TV with Alex Fergusson of Alternative Television. Genesis claimed to have invented acid house with his compilation album, Jack the Tab, which featured a number of acts organised for the purpose. Ball and Richard Norris contributed to the process with “Meet Every Situation Head On,” which led to them working together as the Grid, one of Ball’s more successful projects outside of Soft Cell.

8. Psychic TV – Money for E

Ecstacy use is said to be one of the things that broke up Soft Cell. It is, perhaps, then, ironic that Ball remixed “Money for E” for Psychic TV. This is one of the more successful attempts to rework PTV’s acid-house material; and it shows Ball displaying an innate sense for the dancefloor while being respectful of Fred Giannelli’s original material.

7. Kylie Minogue – Breathe

For someone who mixed with Genesis’ Temple crowd, Ball has had some unexpectedly commercial turns. In 1994, he worked on Billie Ray Martin’s “Your Loving Arms.” A few years later, he was in the arms of Kylie Minogue’s record label, who brought him in to produce three songs on her album, Impossible Princess. This one became a Top 20 single in the UK.

It isn’t, perhaps, surprising to find Minogue working with a producer outside of the commercial mainstream–it was around this time that she was emerging from her indie phase, which saw her working with Nick Cave–but Ball and collaborator Ingo Vauk weren’t necessarily the obvious choice. It worked well for the Australian pop icon, even with a old school synth opening to thrill Moog enthusiasts.

6. David Bowie – Hallo Spaceboy (Lost in Space Mix)

Described by Bowie as “Jim Morrison meets industrial,” this track was originally crafted with Brian Eno for the Outside album in 1995. The official single went to the Pet Shop Boys for their contribution before being released, but this remix by Ball and Vauk made it fit for the dancefloor.

5. The Grid – Swamp Thing

On paper, mixing banjo and samples from old records shouldn’t have been much cop. The novelty paid off, however, for Ball and collaborator Richard Norris, with a top ten single around the world. You can probably still find sealed copies in discount bins, but there is no doubting Ball’s ability to make a hit from the things he found lying around the yard.

4. Other People – Have a Nice Day!

An oddity in the Ball canon, this was a collaboration between Ball and his wife, Gini, together with Andy Astle. With sampled voices, a chugging bass line, sirens, and a repetitive vocal, it came out in the same year as Propaganda’s “Mabuse” and Depeche Mode’s “People Are People” – there was clearly something industrial in the air.

3. Vicious Pink Phenomena – My Private Tokyo

Originally the backing singers for Soft Cell’s live shows, Vicious Pink Phenomena were the duo of Josephine Warden and Brian Moss. With Warden all Euro and Moss all electro, they were too sexy to stand behind Almond forever. Two Ball-helmed singles led to an album of stuttering greatness, but it started for them with this studio work.

2. Client – In It for the Money (The Grid Static in the Attic Mix)

Sarah Blackwood‘s sabbatical from Dubstar led to an outing as Client, the first signing for Andy Fletcher’s Toast Hawaii label. The St. John’s Wood/Notting Hill set took them to heart, and the act’s showbiz connections led to some interesting collaborations. Ball contributed to this one as part of a Grid remix, showing that his finger was never far from the beating pulse of underground music.

1. Soft Cell – Sex Dwarf

In the Soft Cell canon, there are many influential songs to choose from. The best representation of them, however, is in the banned video for “Sex Dwarf”–an over-the-top fantasy of drama and sleaze that reaches comic book proportions. The duo did excess to excess, and the swooping synths left a trail of wine bottles, wrappers and hair products behind them that still hasn’t been properly cleaned up.

Daniel Miller is best known as the owner of Mute Artists (formerly Mute Records, but the original name didn’t come with the sale by EMI) and as The Normal, the artist name used for the release of “TVOD”/”Warm Leatherette.”

The son of Austrian refugees, Miller grew up in North London with a love of Kraftwerk, Can and Neu! and worked as a DJ before buying a Korg 700s and recording his first single. Modest and uncomfortable in the limelight, Miller performed as The Normal with Scottish electronics pioneer, Robert Rental, but found himself happier in the studio and working behind the scenes with his record label than standing on the stage himself.

He discovered and propelled the careers of Depeche Mode and others, but over the years has also been seen lending a technical hand to Thomas Dolby and Soft Cell or producing The House of Love. Miller still records as Sunroof! with his close friend and Mute producer, Gareth Jones.

To launch our new feature, Shine On, we’ve picked out a number of songs to reflect the breadth of Miller’s work as a producer, composer and performer. The constants are a well-developed sense of arrangement, an instinct for unique sounds that are often detuned or shaped in unexpected ways, and a feeling for driving rhythms. These reflect his Krautrock influences but also the effort that comes with closely reading the manuals to his collected synthesizers and then throwing them away.

10. Missing Scientists – Big City Bright Lights

The synthesizer credit on this 1980 release is granted to one “Jacki” and a co-production credit on the A-side goes to “Larry Least,” but both are pseudonyms for Miller. “Jacki” was one of the mythical players in Miller’s Silicon Teens fantasy pop group, while “Larry Least” was a name he adopted as a reference to the producer, Mickey Most.

The reggaetronica style is one that is not commonly associated with Miller, though he was later to contribute to On-U Sounds’ legendary Pay It All Back compilation a few years later.

9. Voice of Authority – Fuh Fuh

When On-U Sound released their first sampler album, Pay It All Back, in 1985, it cost the same as a single and was packed with the juiciest reggae/experimental tracks from Adrian Sherwood’s burgeoning stable of artists. It also contained this short and peculiar composition by Miller, featuring early sampling technology.

8. Thomas Dolby – Radio Silence

In the early 1980s, it was known that, if an artist needed help with some complicated synthesizer set-ups, or the use of a Synclavier, Miller was the go-to person. He did production work with Soft Cell, but less well known is his contribution to this 1982 Thomas Dolby song.

7. Alex Fergusson – Stay with Me Tonight

Another 1980 production effort credited to “Larry Least,” this single from Alex Fergusson (Alternative TV, Psychic TV) is clearly programmed/performed by Miller. At the time, Ferguson was experimenting with the move from punk to electro-pop, a path charted by Mute Records. This single appeared on the Red Records label.

6. Silicon Teens – Sun Flight

Miller’s Silicon Teens project was, for the most part, a series of covers of rock standards, like “Memphis, Tennessee” and “Just Like Eddie,” but it also yielded a couple of original Miller compositions. “Sun Flight” is the one that gets remembered best, as it combines themes of space travel and synths in a way that was not totally dissimilar to a later Mute release, “Fred vom Jupiter” by Die Doraus und Die Marinas.

5. Fad Gadget – Lady Shave

The strength of Miller’s songwriting and production work came out most strongly in his work with Frank Tovey (aka Fad Gadget). Miller took songs written by Tovey and turned them into brooding electronic classics with the menace of punk but a style of their own. The early Fad Gadget singles became an outlet for Miller’s creativity, where he could stretch his one-fingered compositional style to the limits.

“Lady Shave” is an exceptional song from a number of standpoints: the sequenced bassline that carries the song is electro-minimalism incarnate; the studio itself is played to generate tones based on an electric shaver; and the unconventional top line is distinctively Miller.

4. Duet Emmo – Or So It Seems

The most achingly beautiful pop song ever made, we’ve called “Or So It Seems” before, and this collaboration between Miller and Wire refugees, B.C. Gilbert and Graham Lewis, shows Miller at his one-fingered best. Lewis’ vocals are like threads of glass spun around the core of a grumbling bass-line and bells, but the build-up and release of tension in the song is 1982 shot-through.

3. Sunroof – Hero

Miller’s occasional project with Gareth Jones, Sunroof has largely been responsible for covers of Krautrock classics, like this legendary Neu! track. The vocals here are provided by the extraordinarily beautiful Alison Conway, who has appeared as A.C. Marias on Mute and made a number of videos for the label.

2. The Normal – TVOD

If you put out a record by yourself, while living in your mum’s house, the last thing you’d expect is for it to be covered by Grace Jones and adopted as the title for her album. Such was Miller’s luck with “Warm Leatherette,” which Jones’ producer probably heard played by DJ Rusty Egan at the Blitz club.

An attempt to make punk music with synthesizers, “TVOD”/”Warm Leatherette” came out in 1979, while the DIY spirit was still strong, and it is the springboard for everything that followed. We’ve picked “TVOD” for this list, because it gets less attention but shows off techniques like tape cut-up that link the single to the industrial scene that was taking shape at the time.

1. Depeche Mode – Shout

The influence of Miller on early Depeche Mode is very clear from their recordings. While a major label would have polished their sound and image beyond recognition, Mute and Miller brought out the experimental side of the band and gave them room to explore sounds and rhythms that were less obviously commercial. One of the best examples is on this B-side to 1981’s “New Life,” which is driven by sequenced drum-like sounds and the simplest synth line ever.

Psychic TV

Shine On: Dave Ball