Peter Mark Almond (born 9 July 1957)[1] is an English singer best known from the synth-pop/new wave duo Soft Cell and for his distinctive soulful voice and androgynous image.

[2] Almond's career spanning over four decades has enjoyed critical and commercial acclaim, and he has sold over 30 million records worldwide.

[9] He later became a great fan of Marc Bolan and David Bowie, and got a part-time job as a stable boy to fund his music listening.

During his time at art college, he did a series of performance theatre pieces: Zazou, Glamour in Squalor, Twilights and Lowlifes, as well as Andy Warhol inspired mini-movies.

Zazou was reviewed by The Yorkshire Evening Post and described as "one of the most nihilistic depressing pieces that I have ever had the misfortune to see", prompting Almond to later refer to it as a "success" in his autobiography.

He listened at first to progressive music, blues, and rock, and bands such as Free, Jethro Tull, Van der Graaf Generator, the Who, and the Doors.

Almond became a fan of Bolan after hearing him on The John Peel Show, buying the T. Rex single "Ride a White Swan".

They recorded three albums in New York with producer Mike Thorne: Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, Non Stop Ecstatic Dancing and The Art of Falling Apart.

The Mambas at various times included Matt Johnson, Steve James Sherlock, Lee Jenkinson, Peter Ashworth, Jim Thirlwell and Annie Hogan, with whom Almond worked later in his solo career.

Produced by Mike Hedges, it featured musicians from the Mambas outfit, Annie Hogan, Martin McCarrick and Billy McGee.

This ensemble, known as The Willing Sinners, worked alongside Almond for the subsequent albums Stories of Johnny (1985) from which the title track became a minor hit, and Mother Fist and Her Five Daughters (1987), also produced by Mike Hedges.

[18] This album featured Almond's version of "Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart", which was later re-recorded as a duet with the song's original singer Gene Pitney and released as a single.

Later that year, Almond played a lavish one-off show at the Royal Albert Hall in London, which featured an orchestra and dancers as he performed material from his entire career.

Accompanied only by Martin Watkins on piano, he played small Soviet halls and theatres, often without amplification, and ended at the "mini Bolshoi" in Moscow.

The tour was fraught with troubles, which Almond detailed in his autobiography, but it marked the beginning of his love affair with the genre of Russian folk torch songs known as Romance.

Almond also recorded a session for the album with John Cale, David Johanson, and Chris Spedding; some made the final cut.

The album featured a duet ("Threat of Love") with Siouxsie Sioux as well as one ("Almost Diamonds") with Kelli Ali (then of the Sneaker Pimps).

With the encouragement and connections of executive producer Misha Kucherenko, he embarked on a three-year recording project of Russian romance and folk songs, called Heart on Snow.

[22] Featuring many Russian stars old and new such as Boris Grebenshchikov, Ilya Lagutenko of the Russian band Mumiy Troll, Lyudmila Zykina and Alla Bayanova and featuring The Rossiya Folk Orchestra conducted by Anatole Sobolev, it was the first time that such a project had been undertaken by a Western artist, many of the loved Soviet era songs sung in English for the first time.

Two singles came out of this album, "Monoculture" and a cover of the Frankie Valli's "The Night", which led to a Top of the Pops appearance for the band, their first since the mid-1980s.

Picked to tell a story of his life and career, the album featured songs as diverse as "I Have Lived" by Charles Aznavour, to "Stardom Road" by Third World War, Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night", and "Kitsch" by Paul Ryan.

[31] In July 2007, Almond celebrated his 50th birthday on stage at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London and in September performed at a tribute show to Marc Bolan, his teenage hero.

[41] The production also featured ex-Libertines member Carl Barât, French singer-songwriter Benjamin Biolay, Swedish singer Fredrika Stahl and was directed by ex-Clash drummer Peter Howard.

[48] This was followed by The Dancing Marquis album, made with a number of collaborators including Jarvis Cocker, Carl Barât and Jools Holland, featuring production from Tony Visconti on some tracks.

[52] Almond also worked on a song cycle to accompany the filming of a multi media performance of À rebours (translated as Against Nature) by Joris-Karl Huysmans.

[59] Almond's next solo album, Chaos and a Dancing Star, also written with Braide, was recorded in Los Angeles and released in January 2020.

[61] In early 2022, Almond supported Ukraine and released an English-language cover of the Ukrainian folk song, "What A Moonlit Night".

[65] In his autobiography, Almond describes being invited for initiation into Anton LaVey's Church of Satan, and that "not being one to turn down a theatrical moment and a chance to be relegated to the bad book, I immediately said yes."

Noise musician Boyd Rice performed the simple ceremony in "a small grotto in a wood" owned by Rose McDowall close to where the Hellfire Club used to meet.

Almond states that the ceremony involved "no dancing naked, no bonfires, no blood sacrifice", but even so "every hair on my neck stood on end and sweat broke out on my top lip.