Video Disturbeo: Soft Cell.

Oh. My. I really don't think I've ever actually seen the original video for Soft Cell's "Sex Dwarf." I mean, I probably would have remembered seeing it; it's a fairly memorable affair. Directed by Tim Pope, the prolific British director who's responsible for some of the greatest Cure videos ever made, this little film of absolute madness is one of the strangest things we here at SDU HQ have laid our eyes on in recent times.


A naked lady is strapped to a hospital gurney. Dave Ball is smirking in the corner of the white room, playing the blades of a chainsaw like a cello, surrounded by hanging hunks of raw meat. Marc Almond, whilst caressing the struggling naked lady, crows the demented lyrics as the room fills with half-dressed and BDSM-attired people who then proceed to commence an orgy. AND – just when things can't get any whackier, a leather-bound midget (the "sex dwarf" in question, I'd reckon) enters the fray and begins throwing raw meat everywhere.


This is just wrong. But when we here at Second Drawer Up say "wrong," we mean it in a good way. And – hoo, boy – is it NSFW.


From their 1981 debut album Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, here is "Sex Dwarf" by Soft Cell, in its original, uncensored form – the way it was meant to be seen. Fucking brilliant.

Soft Cell - Sex Dwarf (Original Video) from Sergio Diaz on Vimeo.

Electro Classic Jukebox: Soft Cell.

Two years after the triumphant debut of their first album Non-stop Erotic Cabaret and its immediate followup Non-stop Ecstatic Dancing, Soft Cell (Marc Almond & Dave Ball) came back in dark form with their third release, The Art of Falling Apart. While NSEC had more of a playful mentality, singing praises and curses of the sleaziness of late '70s and early '80s Soho, London (think "Sex Dwarf", "Seedy Films", and the lonely doldrums of "Bedsitter"), The Art of Falling Apart found Mssrs. Almond and Ball in much darker territory. From the sadly dysfunctional family at each others' throats in "Where the Heart Is" to the excruciatingly savage and harrowing examination of a stripper's life in "Baby Doll", TAOFA was more interested in telling the stories of people who otherwise wouldn't be noticed by the average Londoner. Maybe that's why it didn't sell as well as its predecessor, but it could also have been the drugs that were beginning to plague the duo. But when I look at the work of Soft Cell during those first three years (their fourth album, This Last Night In Sodom was, to me at least, a mixed bag at best), I find TAOFA to be their most assured and seamless adventure. Almond's voice really reached a level of seedy cabaret brilliance, Ball's synths and drum programming were precise and warm, and their trumpeter John Gatchell delivered some pretty freaking incredible and soulful blasts of jazz into the proceedings. 

All that being said, my favourite track off this album is actually a B-side from the 12" release of "Where The Heart Is". It's a fantastic and really quite weird number called "It's A Mug's Game," and here we find Almond, Ball, and Gatchell delivering what is probably the funniest synth-pop song ever released, ever. This paean to practically the worst day ever has such a silly and incredibly vibrant energy to it, that it nearly explodes out of your speakers. Featuring horrible hangovers, food poisoning, venereal disease, unintended pregnancy, emergency visits to the chemist, money problems, and strict fathers, you've just got to listen to it to believe it. Best lyric: "Oh God, it's another disease / And you just got rid of the last / You were beginning to feel OK / And the friends you gave it to were speaking to you again."

Here's "It's A Mug's Game." Enjoy!

soft cell

"it's a mug's game"

the art of falling apart