Marc and the Mambas was a new wave group formed by Marc Almond in 1982 as an off-shoot project from Soft Cell. The band's line-up changed frequently and included Matt Johnson from The The and Annie Hogan, with whom Marc worked later in his solo career.
Marc and the Mambas may be considered the blueprint for Marc Almond's solo career. As Soft Cell's sound developed more into a darker mix of pop and electronic dance music, the sound of Marc and the...
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Marc and the Mambas was a new wave group formed by Marc Almond in 1982 as an off-shoot project from Soft Cell. The band's line-up changed frequently and included Matt Johnson from The The and Annie Hogan, with whom Marc worked later in his solo career.
Marc and the Mambas may be considered the blueprint for Marc Almond's solo career. As Soft Cell's sound developed more into a darker mix of pop and electronic dance music, the sound of Marc and the Mambas continued the dark themes - but built around more complex rhythms.
Their second album, Torment and Toreros, contains a mix of ballads, both with and without dance beats, and is an interesting mix of Vaudeville, French Chanson, and goth sensibility, using guitar noise, piano, and string sections. Almond later later described this recording as an "attempted suicide put on vinyl." Yet the work endures today, as there was never anything like it before and after.
Interestingly, the group was closer to a jazz outfit rather than a rock group....
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