Soft Cell’s final album inspired by Dave Ball’s morphine trips

Posted On November 30, 2025November 30, 2025

Late Soft Cell legend Dave Ball revealed, in an interview before his passing, that their latest album is inspired by his morphine trips.

Talking to Classic Pop a few months before his tragic passing, Ball shed light on the themes and influences on Soft Cell’s sixth studio LP, Danceteria, which currently has no confirmed release date.

Ball and Marc Almond finished the new project only days before Ball passed away. Ball had previously broken his back in an accident before the release of their 2022 album, Happiness Not Included. Though agonising, the hospital stay would bring him a host of inspiration.

Ball admitted, “I had strange recollections when I was in and out of the hospital, because I was on morphine.”

He added, “The new songs are a digital reflection of the sounds in my head from that time. In parallel, it’s about the times me and Marc got up to in the ’80s.”

The musician continued, “It’s looking backwards and forwards, the creative times we’ve had and how we feel about life now. I live in a fourth-floor flat today, but I was on the 24th floor of the same building when I wrote most of these songs. Overlooking central London, for my first high-rise album, felt very futuristic.”

Adding to this sentiment, Almond shared, “It’s fitting in many ways that the next (and now the last) album together is called Danceteria as the theme takes us for a visit back to almost the start of it all, back to New York in the early ’80s, the place and time that really shaped us. We always felt we were an honorary American band as well as quintessentially British.”

Outside of Soft Cell, Ball was also a member of The Grid, which he founded in 1988 alongside Richard Norris.

Soft Cell are still set to release a super deluxe edition of their classic album, 1983’s The Art Of Falling Apart, on October 31st despite Ball’s passing.

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