A British new wave outfit called Passion Puppets drew brief radio attention through a single inventive track, “Like Dust,” before disappearing almost immediately. Though it seems to evoke Italian Western films, the song earned cult status on Canadian airwaves throughout the 1980s and is recalled far more often than the musicians who created it. Assembled in Camden, England, during 1983, the lineup comprised Ray Burmiston on vocals, Miki Screene on bass and vocals, Andy P. and Dave Rollins on guitars, and Simon Langford Godfrey on drums. Between 1983 and 1984 the band placed three singles—“Like Dust,” “Voices,” and “Beyond the Pale”—with Stiff Records in the United Kingdom. Its sole album, Beyond the Pale, followed in 1984 and reached American listeners through MCA Records distribution. Weak sales prompted the group’s dissolution soon after. Burmiston then turned to photography, shooting pop stars for record labels and British teen magazines. An extended mix of “Like Dust” surfaced in 1994 on the anthology Hardest Hits, Vol. 1, bringing the long-unavailable album to a fresh audience and marking the first time any of the band’s material appeared on CD. In 2000 Burmiston issued the album Miniworld under the name Kicking the Moon.
