Soft+cell

9CD + DVD set, in a 10" x 10" book. Remastered in 2018! Career-spanning 116-track collection of 12" mixes, B-sides, live recordings including BBC and radio performances, demos, alternate versions, fresh reworkings and rarities, plus DVD of TV appearances, live footage, film clips, documentary and more.

Synth Pop reads like a who’s who of the late 70s and early 80s, featuring 53 of the most recognisable and iconic songs of the era. The collection kicks off with Sweet Dreams by the Eurythmics and picks up the pace pretty fast. You know you’re on to a winning collection when Don’t You Want Me by The Human League, Cars by Gary Numan and Tainted Love by Soft Cell are sequenced one after the other. There are so many highlights over the 53 tracks that it’s really hard to single out specific songs for mention…

Sony International's Pop & Wave, Vol. 4 collects two discs' worth of poppy new wave tracks by some of the biggest names as well as some one-hit wonders and very obscure groups too…

TopPop was the first regular dedicated pop music television series in the Dutch language area. The Netherlands broadcaster AVRO aired the programme weekly, from September 22, 1970, to June 27, 1988…

Steven Wilson fans have been primed for The Future Bites since he released To the Bone in 2017. That record, and the preceding 4½ EP, were deliberately "pop" responses to his three-album dalliance with prog – Raven That Refused to Sing, Hand. Cannot. Erase, and Grace for Drowning. In contrast to the above, The Future Bites is a slick exercise in Wilson's oft-articulated love of synth pop and electronic music. It's a loose concept set about the treachery that rampant consumerism foists upon the world, and the danger a technological society imposes on personal identity…

Released while Scorpions were still on their farewell world tour, Comeblack features the iconic German rockers delivering newly recorded versions of some of their most popular songs. “Rock You Like a Hurricane,” “Rhythm of Love,” and others are still as good as ever, but the new versions freshen up these classic songs, sweetening the sound so they’re bigger than their ‘80s counterparts…

Taking their name from a type of cooked pudding, the electronic duo Blancmange interlaced the arty, exotic dance rhythms of Talking Heads with the quirky melodrama of early-'80s British synth pop. Consisting of Neil Arthur (vocals, guitar) and Stephen Luscombe (keyboards), Blancmange formed in London, England in the late '70s. Originally called L360, Blancmange received immediate recognition when they sent the song "Sad Day" to DJ Stevo, who added it to a compilation LP of then-unsigned new wave groups, including future alternative icons like Depeche Mode and Soft Cell. Drummer Laurence Stevens was a member of the band for a short while, but they eventually replaced him with a drum machine…

Norwegian duo Röyksopp compensated for the cold climes of their native Tromsø by making some of the warmest, most inviting downbeat electronica of the 21st century, exemplified by early tracks like "Eple" and "Poor Leno." The pair, Torbjørn Brundtland and Svein Berge, both grew up in Tromsø and began recording in the early '90s…