Back To Nature

Origin
Back To Nature was the first record and single by Frank Tovey, released under his stage name Fad Gadget in 1979. Both Marc Almond and Dave Ball were students in the same Fine Art department of Leeds Polytechnic as him. They decided to cover the song in memory of Tovey, who passed away in 2002.

Record and release
The recording took place around the same time or after the recording of new songs in 2018. Almond recorded vocals in Dean Street Studios, Soho, London. Ball worked on music with producer Rick Mulhall in his Kick Studios. The cover is fairly close to original version, Ball also provided additional backing vocals on chorus. Due to limitations of 7" format, on which Magick Mutants EP was pressed, the 4 minutes long master version was shortened to nearly 2 minutes as vinyl edit.

The EP was released on May 1th, as bonus to limited To Show You I've Been There ... photo book. Prior that Dave Ball was promoting the song on radio and podcast interviews. Upon release purchasers of books received both master and edit versions of “Back To Nature” as digital audio downloads.

Instrumental
An instrumental version of the songs appears on Magick Mutants promo CD along with original master version, both sharing the same length.

Marc Almond edit
Shortly after EP was released in May 2019, Marc Almond has announced on his social media pages that “Back To Nature” on it was mixed incorrectly, with his vocals being off key, thus he is going to fix it and later release correct version via YouTube.

Track was re-mixed with Rob McFarlane in Dean Street Studios, where Almond initially recorded his vocals. The outcome is Almond's vocal track being in tune with music, however Ball's singing parts became absence. It was released on Almond's official YouTube channel on July 15th, 2019, as slideshow video with images corresponding to the lyrics of the song; the video is credited to Katherine Rhodes.

Dave Ball vocal version
A shortened version with Dave Ball singing the entire song, without Almond, was released in June 2020 on his deluxe CD compilation 1979–2019.

Personnel

 * Written-By – Frank Tovey
 * Vocals – Marc Almond
 * Instruments, vocals – David Ball
 * Production – Soft Cell
 * Engineering, programming – Rick Mulhall
 * Engineering (vocals) – Jonny Solway, Rob McFarlane
 * Mixing – Philip Larsen

Availability
“Back To Nature” appears on following records.

Listen

 * Official uploads on YouTube