Photo by Cliff Ash
In 1984, the London-based band Cindytalk released their debut album, Camouflage Heart – and it would go on to become one of the most influential post-punk/industrial albums of all time. Originally formed in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1982, Cindytalk began creating jagged, atmospheric rock that had an otherworldly, intense, and sometimes sinister vibe that still makes them sound distinctive to this day (their latest release, Subterminal, came out in 2022). On May 23, Dais Records reissued a remastered version of Camouflage Heart, and it sounds as fearless and stunning as ever. The charismatic trans vocalist Cinder, who has led Cindytalk since the band’s inception, called The Big Takeover from her home in Glasgow, Scotland, to talk about how this groundbreaking album was created – and why, as she puts it, she likes working from “peripheral positions.”
How did you create the really distinctive atmosphere that pervades this album?
CINDER: My previous group, The Freeze, an Edinburgh-based band, started in 1976, and we struggled to get interest, record company wise. We got a couple of releases made through our own manager’s label, but they were pretty shoddy releases. Certainly, the music on them was good, but we were never really able to spend time in the studio and develop ideas and work out how to use a studio as a tool. Eventually, I had made the decision that we had to get out of Scotland and move to London to continue and expand our ideas and take it to the next level. By the time we got to London and got our record contract, we were demoing tracks for Camouflage Heart, and essentially I think we were just bursting at the seams to do something. So I think there was a buildup of energies and adrenaline, just to try and make a statement of our own, to try and do something which was a bit different from other things that were going around at the time. I think instinctively we were trying to just find a way to get into the studio and explore. In that period, there was quite interesting hysteria within music, and I think we wanted to tap into that a bit, as well, and be as intense and as powerful as we possibly could.
Also, I guess purely on a personal level, I was dealing with the gender thing. Within the context of The Freeze, we had a gay member, and in Scotland, being gay was literally illegal until 1978, I think. So we spent that whole period being his support network. Happily, gladly, lovingly. But I was already dealing with the transgender thing, which didn’t have a name at that point, and I wasn’t sure how to express it, how to share it, other than be myself in the moment. But fast forward to London 1982 when we started working on Camouflage Heart, the things I said about getting a chance to go into the studio and explore and explode, I think maybe the gender thing also comes into play. That gave me an extra edge – just another dimension of approach, because I was kind of desperate to share this. I communicated as best I could, and in as natural a way as I could, so there’s no hidden aspect. But there was a desperation to communicate, because there was no conversation. There was the conversation around the gay and lesbian world, but there wasn’t conversation around the transgender world. And I guess maybe I was trying to create a conversation to do with that. So maybe that aspect of Camouflage Heart also gives an extra dimension which changes it, somehow.
If you’ve always been very upfront about who you are and what you’re going through, then why did you pick “Camouflage Heart” as the album title? That implies a certain hidden element.
CINDER: Yeah, but it was emotional, rather than to do with the sexuality and gender. That was perhaps an emotional title. That title, weirdly enough, I think was relative to protecting your emotions, protecting your feelings, relative to things. Not to hide them. It does sound like that, with “camouflage.” But not necessarily hide them – it just gives them an extra layer of protection. I always thought of Cindytalk as working on the periphery of things, and then moving into the center and detonating and running away again. I’m not into militaristic things, but there’s a kind of weird guerrilla warfare thing about that. You hide, and you shift, and you find yourself in the spaces that you need to be through stealth and camouflage, and then you do what you do, and then you run away from it so that you’re not still in the mix. I guess that’s always been the case with me, in relation to commercial music and the corporate world of music. I’d always rather have the freedom to do what I do from peripheral positions. Certainly, back in the early ’80s, that was in my mind, in terms of the ideas and the work in the studio. Being in that peripheral position and coming in and detonating and then leaving quickly.
And then how did that translate into the lyrics for these songs?
CINDER: I think I was being quite open about how I felt and who I was – in an abstract, poetic sense, obviously. It’s changed with this reissue because Dias Records asked me to do a lyric sheet. Half the words in Cindytalk in any given moment are improvised, so sometimes it’s voice as instrument, so to have a full lyrics sheet would be very difficult, but I did my best to sort of give the main lyrical poetic aspects and elements. When the album came out the first time around in 1984, I made a choice not to have a lyrics sheet because I wanted people to get lost in it, and I don’t think you can do that if you’re following a lyrics sheet. I think I wanted it to be, “Throw yourself into this. We did. We threw ourselves into it. You throw yourselves into listening to it. Get lost and abandon yourself within it and don’t worry about what the lyrics are, because you’ll pick them up.” It’s like learning a language. All good art forces you to learn the language. Immediately. Essentially. You need to do that, otherwise you’re going to have trouble with the terrain that you’re on. You have to learn how it works. And that’s true of all good things. It’s not a major statement. It’s just a fact. When you hear something that seems unfamiliar and maybe a little bit different from normal, that’s because there’s something else happening, and you need to learn how that works.
Photo by Richard Hurding (Cinder during the Camouflage Heart era)
How did you know you wanted to be a musician in the first place?
CINDER: I was a trans human being before I was a musician, before I was a singer. I knew this from a very, very young age. I wonder if there was an element of that cliché of the freedom in the arts where you could express yourself more when you were in that space. I don’t remember ever thinking that, but I wonder if that did play into it. I just remember being a very young human being with far too much energy, addicted to adrenaline, on the edge of aggression and violence, maybe. Not being like that, but being on the edge of that. Or, feeding off that adrenaline. Because, you know, it happens at school: people get into situations. I just remember feeling that there was an energy in there that I was attracted to. I didn’t want to be part of that, but I just instinctively felt drawn to the adrenaline and the kind of energy of that.
And then I was in a record shop in Falkirk [in Scotland], which is not that far from where I was born and grew up. The guy that was behind the counter was playing the first Ramones album. This was in 1976. His father had been off on a trip to New York and picked up this Ramones album which had just been released. In an instant, it changed my world. I’ve got goosebumps now saying that, all these years later. I had a conversation with the person who was playing it. “What the hell is this?” When you look at the first Ramones album today, it’s actually quite classic, almost ’50’s rock in an updated sort of fashion, so it’s quite easy to see where its influences came from. But in that moment, because it was a bit more aggressive, a bit faster, it felt like the most revolutionary thing ever. Again, that energy and adrenaline drew me right in and took me on a completely different path. I knew in that instant that I wanted to be involved in music. I had no abilities, no skills, I didn’t write, and I’d never sung before. But from that position, from starting the band five months later, I knew I wanted to be involved in that zeitgeist.
What do you think about the legacy you’ve created so far with Cindytalk?
CINDER: I’m not sure I’m the person to ask that, because it’s what I’ve been doing my whole life. I still begin projects or step on a stage assuming that the minute that I start music or start singing that people will leave the room. Cindytalk played a concert two weekends ago in Glasgow, and I was convinced that the audience would just leave the building as soon as we started. But the audience got bigger and bigger and bigger whilst we were playing – and in the end, they were screaming at me. And I don’t expect that. I never expect that. I make the assumption that people will find it repellent and vanish. But then I work really hard for that not to happen. I communicate with raw emotions as best I can in performance and during recording, in the hope that people will remain interested. So I don’t know. I can’t speak to legacy. I don’t know that I could ever imagine what that means.
There’s a contradiction here, because I’m not shocked that Camouflage Heart is still being released in 2025. I personally think it deserves that. But I have no expectations. I have hopes, but I have zero expectation. I tend to believe an expectation is a killer. So I live with the hope that people are paying attention and are still listening, or are rediscovering, or discovering anew, but I don’t know. All I can say to that is that I hope people still pay attention and listen and enjoy.
