"Memorabilia" from 80's synth legends Soft Cell

Saturday 30th September 2023

Release date: TBC Label: BMG

The birth point of ecstasy in British music is usually credited to acid house and the second summer of love: a cemented vision of kids sweating and vibrating in clubs, fields and warehouses in 1988, united by universal empathy and mind-popping sounds. However, in 1981, a couple of young men from Leeds went to New York, discovered the drug in its infancy, fused its’ gritty synth pop to acid house’s squelchy 303 groove and recorded an album: Soft Cell’s Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret.  The rest, as they say, is history.

Shortly before that Soft Cell’s debut single Memorabilia was born. Originally recorded a decade before the explosion of acid house and rooted in predominantly black NYC, Chicago and Detroit gay clubs, Memorabilia is a seminal early prelude to rave culture.  Merging a strutting disco bass line with a futuristic proto acid-techno beat, Marc Almond has past described Memorabilia as “the first acid house techno record ever”.

Dave Ball remembers: “Memorabilia got to about number 99 in the charts, but the clubs picked up on it. In NME or Sounds they had a chart for the Danceteria in New York, and we were in it. Our label Phonogram saw this and thought: ‘why is this weird little duo from Leeds that no one's heard of suddenly getting played in one of the hippest clubs in New York?’ So I think they thought: ‘we’ll give them another chance’.”

However, it was what the duo did next that completed their transition to making music on ecstasy, about ecstasy, and for taking ecstasy to. The remix of Memorabilia that came out in 1982 from the aptly titled Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing is unquestionably E music. Stretched out to seven glistening minutes on the single release, the track even features a sultry rap from Cindy Ecstasy: “let’s take a pill and shut our eyes and watch our love materialise.” 

“New York was a whirlwind,” Marc Almond now summarises, as he recalls being mesmerised by the sounds of Patrick Cowley and Grace Jones surging through world-beating sound systems. “If life is measured in our collection of experiences, then that trip had so many.”

Fast forward to 2023 and Soft Cell’s first producer, Mute Records’ supremo Daniel Miller, has reworked his original 1981 version of Memorabilia into a throbbing techno workout. Currently ripping up a storm in Berlin’s techno clubs on promo by the DJ cognoscenti, the remix package is fast picking up support clubs across Europe, the US and beyond.

Posted by Craig Jones