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Cabaret Voltaire to perform live for the first time in over 20 years
07.07.2014
10:45 am
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The massively influential Sheffield industrial/dance band Cabaret Voltaire—or at least one of them—will play their (his?) first gig in over two decades this summer at the Berlin Atonal festival.

Berlin Atonal is delighted to announce that it will host the very first Cabaret Voltaire live performance in over 20 years. Cabaret Voltaire’s blend of dance music, techno, dub, house and experimentalism made them, without a doubt, one of the most influential acts of the last 40 years. With a line up now consisting solely of machines, multi-screen projections and Richard H Kirk, the first Cabaret Voltaire performance of the 21st Century – featuring exclusively new material and no nostalgia – promises to be formidable.

By forming in 1973 and making music that was unquestionably industrial, Cabaret Voltaire managed the interesting feat of forming an influential post-punk band before punk existed. Like Suicide, they were noted for combative and baffling live performances that could lead to audience violence against the band, but when their notoriety led to a deal with Rough Trade Records, they broadened their sound, releasing albums like Red Mecca, a prescient concept album on which the band compared the rise in Christian extremism to the rise of militant Islamism (this in 1981!), and Micro-Phonies, whereon they tamped down on the dissonance a bit and made music for the dance floor, which strongly influenced Ministry’s turn towards the aggressive on Twitch. In the late ‘80s, they toyed with EBM and house, but by then they were behind the curve, not ahead of it.
 

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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07.07.2014
10:45 am
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