Magick Mutants

Recording
Magick Mutants EP is a ‘sequel’ release to duo's debut record – Mutant Moments, and features re-recorded versions of Soft Cell's early songs. It is also dedicated to memory of Frank Tovey, featuring a cover of his first single as Fad Gadget, “Back To Nature”.

Tracks were recorded and engineered in 3 various studios: Dean Street Studios in Soho, London (vocals), Kick Studios in Richmond (“Back To Nature”) and Orange Girl Studios in Essex (other tracks).

Due to quality limitations of 7″ EP format, tracks were edited to short ‘vinyl’ versions, while full ‘master’ versions were planned to be given in digital format.

Release
Initially Magick Mutants was sold exclusively with limited photo book To Show You I've Been There ..., which was printed in 1,300 copies. They were announced and become available for pre-order in October 2018, while full track list of the EP was revealed in March 2019. Dave Ball was promoting the EP with the book on radio and podcast interviews and playing some of the tracks from it.

At first release date was stated to be April 2019, but in the end it has become May 1th. Upon release, purchasers of the book were also given trough email an archive file containing tracks of the EP in MP3 format: full ‘master’ versions and edits for vinyl, 8 files overall.

The release of the book and EP was accompanied by a launch party in Soho, London on May 2nd.

Later in 2020 the EP has become available to buy in record stores, without the book and digital version.

Other versions
Promo CD version of the EP contains ‘master’ mixes and instrumental versions of featured tracks.

Artwork
Being a follow up to Mutant Moments EP, Magick Mutants also features artworks by Dave Ball. The front cover shows two persons with prominent similarity in appearance to a woman from “Mutant Moments” postcard (drawn by Kris Neat). As with the use of word ‘magick’ in the title, arts also feature occult symbols: unicursal hexagram, crescent moon, a triangle (fire element in alchemy or reference to the Eye of Providence) and pentagrams.

Layout design is credited to James McWilliam.

Track listing

 * 7" vinyl


 * Promo CD

Personnel

 * Vocals – Marc Almond
 * Synthesizers – Dave Ball
 * Production – Soft Cell
 * Vocal engineering – Jonny Solway, Rob McFarlane (at Dean Street Studios)
 * Engineering, programming – Jon Savage (tracks A1, A2 and B1, at Orange Girl Studios), Rick Mulhall (track B2, at Kick Studios)
 * Mixing – Philip Larsen

Trivia

 * “Mutant Moments” and “Magick Mutants” titles were derived from the title of famous swing song “Magic Moments”.
 * The launch party of book and EP on May 2nd was also celebrating Dave Ball's 60th birthday (May 3rd).
 * After the release of EP Marc Almond has revealed, that “Back To Nature” track was mixed incorrectly and it's going to receive a correction follow up trough YouTube (see more: Back To Nature).