Soft Cell open Danceteria nights in the indie shops

Soft Cell have announced a run of in-store listening parties at independent UK record shops on 22 September, three days before the release of Danceteria, the duo’s sixth and final studio album.

The band announced the events on 25 August. Sister Ray in Soho, Stranger Than Paradise in Hackney, Trust Store in Oxford and Witney, and Vinilo in Southampton are among the shops taking part. Each night will include an event-exclusive white-label vinyl and limited goodies, offered on a first-come, first-served basis.

Danceteria arrives on 25 September via Republic of Music. Marc Almond has described the album as a “love letter to New York in the early 80s”. Dave Ball completed the record shortly before his death in October 2025, and the release stands as the last full Soft Cell studio statement shaped by both members.

From Tainted Love to a final dispatch

Soft Cell are the English synth-pop duo of vocalist Marc Almond and instrumentalist David Ball. They came to prominence in the early 1980s and remain best known for their 1981 hit version of Tainted Love and the platinum-selling debut Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret. A companion set, Non-Stop Ecstatic Dancing, followed in 1982, carrying the first wave of material further onto the dancefloor.

Their later catalogue has seen a concentrated return to releasing material. In 2024, Soft Cell issued Happiness Now Completed alongside a run of EPs — Bedsitter, Memorabilia / A Man Could Get Lost, Torch and What?. Two further titles appeared in 2025: First Hand Experience In Second Hand Love and Martin. Danceteria now closes that sequence as the sixth studio album and the last.

Two recent singles have already introduced the new songs. In Heaven (When I Dance With You) arrived in July, with The Space Inside following on 11 August. Both point toward the atmosphere Almond has sketched — night-time New York of the early 1980s, filtered through the duo’s long-established electronic language.

Formats, pre-orders and the shop floor

Pre-orders are open now. The album will be available on vinyl, on CD with two bonus tracks, and on cassette, through softcell.co.uk and Republic of Music. The listening-party white label sits outside those standard formats, a one-night exclusive tied to the shops themselves.

That choice of setting matters. Soft Cell’s records have always moved between the private listen and the public floor; an in-store first play, with physical extras in hand, keeps both sides of that bargain. For listeners who have followed the pair from Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret through the recent run of albums and EPs, these nights offer a chance to hear a new Soft Cell record together before it leaves the room and enters the wider catalogue.

The parties fall on 22 September. The album follows on the 25th. What Soft Cell do next under that name has not been set out. For the moment the work is the record, the shops, and the three days between first play and release.