Tag: Cabaret Voltaire

“It’s true that Cabaret Voltaire‘s first two proper studio albums hardly match the greatness of later works like Red Mecca, 2 X 45, and even 3 Crepuscule Tracks. Despite this, both Mix-Up and The Voice of America — rather similar records that were released back to back in 1979 and 1980 — only helped solidify Cabaret Voltaire‘s status as an integral part of the extended frisson of 1978-1982 post-punk, so if they had ceased to exist before their best work, it would still be very correct to refer to them as ‘important.’ … Mix-Up, their first album, impressively harnesses noise, primitive rhythm box percolations, tape loops, garbled vocals, and blasts of Farfisa. ‘Kirlian Photograph’ is an ugly slab of dub with frizzling snaps of white-heat buzz, clunky percussion, and a plodding bassline forming its skanking, roiling rhythm. Both the bass and incidental vocals are relegated to the back of the mix as the piercing detritus takes center stage. … For all the manual binning and sandblasting of rock’s elemental properties, the band could take an acid-damaged rock song like ‘No Escape’ and make it sound even more damaged while retaining its spirit, nerve, and structure. The remainder of the album hisses and hectors in a similar fashion, tidily bundling pop-song length pieces that will do nothing for that headache of yours. …”
allmusic (Audio)
W – Mix-Up
iTunes
YouTube: Mix-Up 6 videos

“The Cabaret Voltaire, founded in Zurich in 1916 by the theatre works director Hugo Ball with a group of German artists, was the cradle of dadaism, breaking-out and innovative movement of traditional artistic logics. At the Cabaret took place exibitions of Russian and French art, ballets, poetry readings, performances of afro music. Provocative and disconcerting activities that often turned to authentic cultural ‘events’. Almost sixty years later, in Sheffield (England), three university students, very interested in punk, funk and electronics, dream of emulating on staff the Zurich dada pioneers’ experiments. They are Stephen Mallinder (bass/voice), Richard H. Kirk (guitar) and Christ Watson (tape manipulation). In 1973 the three guys form Cabaret Voltaire, a band that would leave a deep print on the whole evolution of forthcoming industrial music. … ‘Our project’ – tells Richard H. Kirk – ‘was born from boredom, from the lack of a future and from the need to create problems’. In their first performances, the trio comes with synths, rhythm generators, wind instruments, sounds registered and manipulated with tape-recorders. … The experiments with synthesizers (begun with Kraftwerk, Schulze and Neu!) combine with the dilated psychedelic music of first Pink Floyd and with exotic sounds, in particular from Asia. Representative in this sense are the single ‘Nag Nag Nag’, the ‘distorted’ cover of ‘Here She Comes Now’ by Velvet Underground and the EP Extended Play. …”
Cabaret Voltaire – The industrial dadaism
W – Extended Play (Cabaret Voltaire EP)
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Extended Play (Full EP) 16:00

“It isn’t without reason that Red Mecca is often referred to as one of Cabaret Voltaire’s most cohesive and brilliant records. There are tangible bumpers (the record is buttressed by squealing/wheezing interpretations of Henry Mancini’s music for Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil), so by that aspect there’s a tangible center. And taken as a whole, the record contains all the characteristics that have made the Sheffield group such an influential entity when it comes to electronic music of the untethered, experimental variety that isn’t afraid to shake its tail a little. Unlike a fair portion of CV’s studio output, Red Mecca features no failed experiments or anything that could be merely cast off as ‘interesting.’ It’s a taught, dense, horrific slab lacking a lull. Dashes of Richard H. Kirk’s synthesizer are welded to Chris Watson’s tape effects for singed lashes of white noise, best heard on the lurching ‘Sly Doubt’ and the jolting ‘Spread the Virus.’ …”
allmusic (Audio)
Brainwashed
W – Red Mecca
Discogs (Video)
YouTube: Red Mecca [Full Album] 40:20