I’m not—and have really never been—much of an electronic dance music fan. I just can’t listen to it at home and these days I’m too old for nightclubs. I’m not putting it down, it’s just not my bag, man.

However, one EDM group that I was wild about back in the day (when they were still calling it “techno”) was the Grid, the partnership between David Ball (formerly of Soft Cell) and Richard Norris. There was always something poptastic and earworm-catchy about their (primarily) instrumental formula, which was more or less to take galloping Goa trance beats and overlay them with exotic vocals, opera singers, Timothy Leary, flamenco guitars, gospel choirs, esoteric pop culture samples and even a lead banjo. Along the way they’ve collaborated with Robert Fripp, Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera, Yello’s Dieter Meier, Henry Cow’s Dagmar Krause and noted songwriter/producer Chris Braide (Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Lana Del Rey, the new Marc Almond album, etc).
 

 
Although they were never that well-known Stateside, the Grid had several hit albums and singles in England, Europe, Asia and Australia in the early to mid-90s. One of their singles, “Swamp Thing,” sold over a million records, rare for an instrumental number. They went on a long term hiatus in 1996, a stretch broken by a stellar, but little noticed album called Doppelgänger in 2008.
 

 
The pair first joined forces while Norris was collaborating with Genesis P-Orridge on Jack the Tab: Acid Tablets Volume One, a fake “acid house” compilation album that was released in 1988 and had a fair amount of influence as to where rave culture would go for the next few years. It yielded the dancefloor hit “Meet Every Situation Head On” that was credited to Norris’s “R.Noise” pseudonym and released as a 12” single under the name M.E.S.H.
 

 
That still sounds fucking amazing some 25 plus years later, does it not?

Here’s “Swamp Thing” with Roger Dinsdale on banjo. I could listen to this on repeat for hours on end (and often do):

 
More of the Grid after the jump…

 
Most of the time when a band reforms, the results are lackluster. A creative partnership that’s run its course isn’t easily resurrected for love nor money and usually it’s for the latter and not the former that most reunion albums and tours occur.

That’s the way that I normally feel, but when Marc Almond and David Ball decided to reform Soft Cell in 2001 I was very excited to see what they’d come up with after 18 years. They had worked together on a few thing in the years since Soft Cell split in 1984, so it wouldn’t be an issue of them looking backwards to the 80s or anything like that. The idea of a mature Soft Cell seemed vastly appealing.

The first thing they released was “God Shaped Hole,” a track that was a part of a 2001 Some Bizarre compilation album titled, I’d Rather Shout at a Returning Echo than Kid That Someone’s Listening. They went on to record their unfairly neglected Cruelty Without Beauty album, which came out in 2002 and toured the globe in support of it. Sadly ticket sales were poor and most of the US dates were cancelled. I was lucky enough to catch them at the Wiltern Theater in Los Angeles (which was packed) and they put on one hell of an amazing show that balanced the hits with the new material.

The lead single from Cruelty Without Beauty was “Monoculture,” an infectiously catchy, but sharply-pointed diatribe about the bland horror show that popular culture was becoming (and this is years before the Kardashians or Cupcake Wars...) The evil Ronald McDonald-type character seen in the video is Some Bizzare label boss and former Soft Cell manager Stevo Pearce.
 

 
More Soft Cell after the jump…

 
Soft Cell (Marc Almond and David Ball) share the stage with Clint Ruin/Foetus/J.G. Thirlwell and squealing saxophonist Gary Barnacle for this excellent cover version of Suicide’s “Ghost Rider.”

Obviously Suicide would have been a huge influence on both Soft Cell and Thirwell, and they really tear it up here in this intense homage taped for the BBC in 1983. Listen loud.