Cindytalk, the restless, ever-shifting vessel of Scottish shape-shifter Cinder, thrives on disarray, drawing chaos close and splintering it into shards of noise, balladry, catharsis, and chance. Camouflage Heart, over four decades old and still uncannily current, is a serrated meditation on fracture and resilience. It lunges between crawl and collapse, its pacing pulling taut like a wire about to snap.
After a clutch of celebrated releases on Midnight Music and collaborations with This Mortal Coil, Cocteau Twins, and fellow travelers, Cinder decamped Stateside, plunging into underground techno circles before uprooting again to Hong Kong and Japan. These forays into a more pop-oriented structure allowed Cinder to see her voice in extremes, with Cindytalk drifting towards the dissonant end of the spectrum. Citing Brian Eno’s use of the studio as a compositional tool and instrument, Cinder and the band became immersed in the process at London’s Gateway Studio.
“We were determined to take our time and try to learn how to use a studio and stretch ourselves,” says Cinder. These restless relocations reshaped Cindytalk’s trajectory, culminating in a fertile alliance with Viennese experimental outpost Editions Mego, birthing five albums of fractured, granular intensity.
By 2021, Dais Records entered the fold, issuing long-lost treasures like Wappinschaw and The Wind Is Strong.... Now, the gaze snaps back to where it all began: 1984’s Camouflage Heart, still startling, still singular, still scorching decades later.
Percussion stutters and lurches: sometimes a tin bath thrashed, sometimes an ominous whisper of rhythm, while guitars rattle, jab, and judder beneath. Cinder’s voice, unbound, quivers between lullaby and laceration, dredging poetry from a cerebral chasm. Each track teeters between ruin and revelation, prodding the listener to glimpse light through the wreckage. This is a record that rips through restraint, baring the bruises beneath, always tilting toward transformation, always alert to beauty lurking amid the breakdown.
“I still remember that person who was way too intense for their own good,” Cinder reflects. “I couldn’t make a record like that now, certainly not vocally, while that anger hasn’t dissipated; there’s still a kind of warrior.”
“The goal was to have a more interesting narrative, more interesting dialogue. Music was ultimately my only way of talking to people. That was my conversation with the world, an abstracted conversation…an attempt to make some kind of tiny, tiny mark, if possible, you hope somebody will notice.”
Cinder, with bandmates David Clancy and John Byrne, arrived at Cindytalk, a winking nod to Sindy, the British fashion doll rival to Barbie known then for its pull-string talking mechanism.
“We were trying to find our own space,” says Cinder. With contemporary discourse we see that the project manifested her transgender ideas as visceral music. The guttural, feral sound marked a notably darker turn from The Freeze’s six-year run on the fringes of punk. Changing the project’s name became vital, not just because they kept hearing the former was already taken, but the desire to embody the spiritual and sonic shift, “to uncover new pathways…to feminize it,” she says.
Over the years, Cinder has heard from listeners who picked up on the signals, finding refuge in Camouflage Heart’s fractured transmissions. What once shimmered beneath the surface feels sharper now, and with a sly grin, proposed the perfect reissue twist: press it in unapologetic Barbie pink.
Dais Records obliges, reissuing Camouflage Heart on May 23 in that very bubblegum hue. This edition marks the album’s first remaster, complete with restored artwork, liner notes, and lyrics finally unveiled. For the first time since 2007, vinyl returns -100 pressed in pink, 500 in transparent clear, plus classic black—all remastered by Josh Bonati and available in stores and digitally.
You can pre-order the album here.
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The post Scottish Post-punk Artist Cindytalk to Reissue 1984 Debut Album via Dais Records — Listen to “It’s Luxury” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
