Marc Almond webchat – post your questions now
Trying to pin Marc Almond down isn’t easy. On the one hand, he’s taken inspiration from opera, performance art and the Soho arts scene in an often experimental musical career that’s involved collaborations with the likes of Coil, Mark Ravenhill and Nico. On the other, he’s been a chart-topping synth-popper who came to prominence with Soft Cell in the 1980s and ended up knocking Kylie and Jason off the top of the charts as a solo artist.
Along the way there have been plenty of interesting avenues pursued – from embarking on 80s revival tours to covering the music of Russian singer Vadim Kozin on 2009’s Orpheus in Exile – and he’s amassed an impressive 20-plus solo albums. Having turned 60 this summer, Almond is still moving forward: As a master interpreter, he’s about to release Shadows and Reflections, an album of 1960s orchestral baroque pop and torch songs, before heading out on a UK tour in October. Featuring songs by Burt Bacharach, the Yardbirds and Julie Driscoll, Almond believes the album will nevertheless tell its own story, about wealth and emptiness in the modern world. Indeed, he says he picked some of the songs on the record because of the eeriness they convey: “Those 60s records have an oddness about them, sometimes out of the mould and unsettling, that light psychedelia approach from the early Floyd records, Sgt Pepper and Soft Machine.”
To discuss all these things and anything else you want to throw at him (at a guess: what his favourite Pixar film is), Almond will join us in the Guardian office for a live webchat at 11.15am UK time on Monday 7 August. Please post your questions for him in the comment section below.
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