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Richard H. Kirk on ‘Shadow of Fear,’ Cabaret Voltaire’s first new album since 1994
11.18.2020
07:46 am
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‘Shadow of Fear’ on Mute

Like a late-night transmission from a long-dormant UHF station, a new Cabaret Voltaire LP is beaming from Sheffield on November 20 to succor Dangerous Minds readers during these trying times. Shadow of Fear, the Cabs’ first new release since 1994’s The Conversation, is also the first we’ve heard from the band since founding member Richard H. Kirk resurrected the name for the 2014 Berlin Atonal festival and subsequent live performances in happy European cities.

I caught up with RHK by phone last week. Despite a historically bad connection, I managed to learn a few things about Shadow of Fear, the new incarnation of Cabaret Voltaire, and Kirk’s welcome plans to release two more new Cabs albums and a twelve-inch single next year. An edited transcript of our conversation follows.


Richard H. Kirk (Courtesy of Mute)

How has the last year been?

Um, pretty boring. I mean, I was lucky, insomuch that I managed to get all of my recording finished just as the lockdown was coming in in England, so, you know, that was something. But pretty much since I finished recording the new album… I’ve got a couple of guys who I work with on the artwork, so next thing I was into that, and then afterwards it was mastering.

So it’s been pretty boring, you know? Not particularly nice weather, um, and, you know, now lockdown again. [laughter] I mean, I haven’t been out of the house since January. 

Wow.

Well, back in January I got sick with some kind of bug which was suspiciously… it felt like it could be COVID. But I was unwell for about six weeks, and then I finally came back from it, so I just didn’t feel it was advisable to go out. I mean, I’m lucky; I have a garden, so I’m not kind of [stuck] indoors.

I just feel like, over the summer, people went a bit too crazy. They lifted the lockdown, started encouraging people to go to pubs, restaurants, and that’s all kind of kicked back in, you know? It’s still out there.

I saw a lot of pictures in the media of people on beaches.

I mean, I’m 64 and also, I smoke, and I figure that I could be a good candidate [laughs] for illness, so I just have to be patient. They just announced some sort of vaccine today in the UK, but I don’t know whether I believe much of what’s on the news media anymore.

You’ve always been a skeptical consumer of media, right?

Totally, news.

If not for COVID, would you have been out on the road this year? Did you have plans to tour?

Yeah, I mean, there were a couple of possibilities for Europe. I think one was in the Czech Republic and one in Spain. But in the end, you know, it was October, and I just thought, I don’t think it’s gonna [work]. I’d love to be out there. I get the opportunity to travel around Europe, so, I really enjoy that, but at the moment I’m kind of stuck—stuck in Sheffield. Next year, things might be better, but there’s no guarantee about that.

Can you tell me about the process of making the record?

Okay, so, the tracks I started to write back in 2014, when I did the first Cabaret Voltaire show for twenty-something years, and it just built from there, basically. Over a five-year period, I had about three hours’ worth of material that I’ve been using for the live shows. And then in September of last year, I started to assemble it into the album, just making overdubs and removing things generally. Trying to make something that was a live experience into something that could be played as an album and repeatedly listened to. 

I don’t want to pry too much, but the bio mentions that you had computer problems, so I’m curious what your setup is.

Okay, well, I have like a very old ProTools system on a Mac G4 which is twenty years old, so even my computer equipment is vintage. [laughter] But I decided to buy a MacBook Pro, and I was gonna get, like, Ableton, or another program called Reaper that’s very cheap and apparently very good. [So I bought my] MacBook, and I was just about to order the software, and I noticed that the USB ports didn’t work. So I took the computer to a repair place, and they said that it looked like someone had spilled a cup of coffee in there, into the circuit boards. So I sent it back and got a refund and just decided to work with [the G4]... you know, because I’d spent a long time looking into different setups and talking to various people who might recommend some different ways of working, and then I just got fed up, and decided “I’ll work with what I have.” And it turned out good for me in the end.

Yeah, I like this record very much. Do you play guitar on it at all?

Sure, there’s quite a bit of guitar on about three or four tracks that spring to mind. Maybe four tracks or something.

Are there any other live instruments?

No. Just guitar.
 

Cabaret Voltaire, 2014 (via Mute)
 
And these are pieces that you came up with playing at festivals, right? Starting with the Berlin show, and then you built it up as you did the festivals?

Yeah. I was writing new tracks when I usually went to a different place. Also I used a lot of ambient and tonal material in the live shows, like drones, so I kind of kept expanding upon that as well. There was way too much for an album. So apparently I’m okay to mention that there are gonna be two more albums and a twelve-inch single in the new year.

Oh, that’s wonderful!

Well, uh, you haven’t heard it yet. [laughter] The two albums are kind of drones, like sixty-minute tracks, very electronic, no beats, just kinda head music, which was a total contrast to what I did for the first piece. And the twelve-inch single is kind of, not techno, but more dance-orientated, but didn’t really work within the context of Shadow of Fear, so I thought it would be nice to make that a separate release just on twelve-inch vinyl. So yeah, there’s more to it than meets the eye.

When I was listening to Shadow of Fear, I imagined a visual accompaniment to it when you see it live. Is there a video or film component?

I mean, I used these screen visuals for the live shows, but none of it was synced up. It exists, but not as yet in conjunction with the music, and I think the problem… it’s kind of one thing to do it live, but there’s so much copyright material in there, I think if I tried to release it on a DVD or as a film, I could end up with some legal problems. [laughs] But I don’t know, maybe at some point in the future, it may be something that could happen, but at the moment it’s just straight-ahead music.

You always handled that aspect of the band, right? Didn’t you create the video component of the live show?

Yeah, I mean, that’s one of the things that I did throughout Cabaret Voltaire. Originally it was, like, Super 8 and standard 8 film, and then, in the early Eighties, video. I didn’t make the promos. We worked with a guy called Peter Care who now is based out in Los Angeles, and he made a lot of the long-form videos with us, some we edited, some he edited. But the live visuals always kind of had more to do with what I did. That was a kind of continuation, just with more screens and larger screens.

As a fan of Cabaret Voltaire, I always thought of it as a kind of information service, maybe in part because of what you did with Doublevision. I wanted to ask you where you go for information and culture.

Oh my God! I mean, I don’t use social media at all, you know, I don’t have any of my own channels. If I’m honest, I have fun trying to decode mainstream media, i.e., television. I’m still with television and radio, but I do use certain things; I do find the internet useful. But I wouldn’t rely on it for a lot of things. Maybe some years back, you know, it was easier to find some clarity and some truth, but, I mean, what can I say. The last four years of Mr. Trump and fake news hasn’t really helped, shall we say.

No, it’s one of the things that’s really worrying about a vaccine, because if a large percentage of people in America or the UK don’t believe the vaccine works, or think it’s nefarious, it will be much harder to get rid of the virus.

Totally, totally. But then again, who knows? Like, they say that this virus originated in bats. You know, we might end up with a load of vampires! [laughter] People start mutating. But, I mean, they say that the one they have, the one they’re gonna use here, they’ve tested it, and I assume that means at least no one’s died who’s been given it. 

But yeah, I totally agree with what you’re saying about whether people will trust it. Especially if there are voices shouting loud that you shouldn’t, you know?
 

‘Chance Versus Causality,’ Cabaret Voltaire’s 1979 film soundtrack issued last year
 
There’s something about the early days of industrial music—I feel that you all approached music-making as a form of counter-propaganda, if that makes sense to you. Do you think of Cabaret Voltaire as still having that function?

I think, if not that exact function, then something very similar. Maybe it’s more evident in the live shows. But it’s difficult to explain. It’s nice to ask some questions in there, if you get what I’m saying, without being too specific, too blatant about it.

Raising doubts?

Yeah, that would be a good way to put it. And just, I don’t know, taking the piss out of establishment values. It was a big thing with the Surrealists, and I still hold true to that, you know?

Richard, did you have anything else you wanted to say about this record?

Not particularly. I hope that it can speak for itself. It’s not a piece of COVID propaganda or something, it’s just about the dark times we seem to have entered in recent years. It’s almost like, especially with the news media, everything seems to be a threat to people of one type or another, whether it’s Al-Qaeda, Islamic State, the coronavirus, you name it, there’s a very long list. I often wonder, why do they do this to us? Why should everybody be scared? 

I’m a bit relieved that Trump didn’t win another four years, because in England things are—kinda like a right-wing government, and if you look back to the 1920s and what happened in Germany, and the notion that immigrants are scapegoats, and like basically if you create a situation of chaos, then what it needs is a strongman to come in and take charge. And we all know who the strongman was in Germany, we know how that went. So the way this thing has been going, you can’t help thinking about how we ended up with the Nazis, and are we going to end up with them again? But I don’t know, maybe things might change now.

I totally agree with you. That was Trump’s strategy over the summer, was to try to make the protests as violent as possible so that he could then appear to be the person restoring law and order to the country.

Strange way to do it. [laughter]

It’s like a protection racket.

Yeah. Yeah, totally. And you’ve got a few people in Europe, very right-wing leaders, and I’m just wondering now whether we might see the domino effect now that the main protagonist is exiting stage left, hopefully.

Hopefully.

Well, yeah. I just got some news earlier, and he’s mounting his legal challenges. I mean, I was watching the news over the past couple of days, and they just had this bedraggled figure in a baseball cap swinging at a golf ball on one of his fucking golf ranges. [laughter] It just looks so sad, you know? All on his own.

I don’t know, I don’t think he’s been right since he supposedly had the coronavirus and then they gave him a load of steroids. I think something went a bit astray.

I think the guy’s in denial. He needs to do the right thing and let someone else clear up his mess. 

Thank you for talking with me, Richard, I’m a huge fan of your music. I hope you’re able to tour sometime soon so I can see you play.

Well, now that things have changed in America, you might even see me make my way across the Atlantic, you know? I look at a lot of news footage, and those mass shootings, you know, it just seemed at one point, America just seemed, like, very dangerous. I don’t know, maybe I’m just seeing the worst and not the best. 

You know, and then there’s all the police beating and murdering Black people. I mean, for fuck’s sake, man, you know?

It doesn’t make you want to visit?

Well, not up until the recent change of leadership. It’s a long time since I’ve been to America. I think 1991 was the last. I think I went to Montreal in the year 2000, but that’s Canada.

Was that a solo gig?

Yeah, it was. I played at FCMM film festival. It’s really good, a really good festival. I’ve had one or two requests, but the problem is I don’t like to fly. Some guys, they were trying to get me on a cargo boat, but it took like two weeks or something.

That’s a long trip.

Well, it is on a cargo boat. [laughter]

Probably not a lot of amenities.

No. [laughter] So, we’ll see. It would be great to get back out and play some more live shows, but by that time I will have written new work anyway, so it would be a combination of existing things from the new album and then a bunch of new stuff. 

Shadow of Fear is out November 20 on LP, CD, and streaming.

Posted by Oliver Hall
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11.18.2020
07:46 am
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Sheffield Tape Archive, one-stop shop for the Gun Club, Rudimentary Peni, the Fall and Pulp


The 1985 compilation ‘Sheffield Calling’ (via Sheffield Tape Archive)
 
Sheffield Tape Archive collects demos and live tapes recorded in Sheffield and its environs between 1977 and 2007. Nick Taylor, the custodian of the archive, has assembled a bonkers array of musical goods: the 1979 demos of ClockDVA and I’m So Hollow, both recorded (at least in part) at Cabaret Voltaire’s Western Works studio; a 1993 Rudimentary Peni gig in Derby that opens and closes with back-to-back performances of “Teenage Time Killer” and “B-Ward”; a Leeds show from Screaming Lord Sutch’s barnstorming anti-Thatcher campaign in 1983; the Fall, live at Hallam University, 1993 (with a great instance of typo-as-rock criticism: “Why Are People Grudgeful?” is mislabeled “Why Are People Grungeful?”); Eighties sets by Crass, Eek-A-Mouse, and Chumbawamba at Sheffield’s Leadmill; a typically flattening 20-minute Stretchheads set from 1990; and much else.

For the Pulp fan, the compilation Live at the Hallamshire Hotel 1981-85 mixes dour performances from ‘84 and ‘85 gigs with live material by the Membranes, Bog-Shed, Heroes of the Beach, and the Wacky Gardeners. Speaking of the Wacky Gardeners, many groups are featured here whose fame has yet to reach our benighted American shores, such as the Fuck City Shitters, Naked Pygmy Voles, the Wealthy Texans and A Major European Group.

Some of the material at Sheffield Tape Archive comes from the collection of the late Sheffield music journalist Martin Lilleker, who suffered from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease before his death in 2016. Taylor donates the proceeds from Lilleker’s tapes to charity.

Here’s Jarvis Cocker playing guitar in ‘82 in one of Taylor’s groups, Heroes of the Beach. They’re doing an original number called, ah, “Psycho Killer” (so named “because it had a bassline similar to the Talking Heads song,” Taylor explains):

 
Listen to some Gun Club. Crass and Clock DVA, after the jump…

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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06.15.2018
07:44 am
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In The Shadows: Cabaret Voltaire, live at the Hacienda, 1983
04.27.2017
11:36 am
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The Haçienda opened its doors on May 21, 1982, and the very next day Cabaret Voltaire played its first gig there.

A year later, in August 1983, Cabaret Voltaire released The Crackdown, which is arguably their strongest LP (either that or Red Mecca), and the band did a brief series of gigs in the U.K. to support the album. As you can see from this marvelous full-page ad that appeared in the NME, the Haçienda was the first stop on the tour. (The two dates featuring Einstürzende Neubauten as openers are totally mouth-watering, no?)

The Haçienda show took place on August 11, 1983, and it was documented on video. 

More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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04.27.2017
11:36 am
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Cabaret Voltaire to perform live in the U.K. for the first time since 1992 next month
03.24.2017
08:00 am
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The greatest musical act in world history to take its name from a Swiss Dada touchstone, Cabaret Voltaire announced earlier this week that it intends to play its first U.K. show in 25 years when it takes the stage at Derbyshire’s The Devil’s Arse Cave on April 29.

In an odd bit of phrasing, a poster released by the band asserts that the show is “billed as a performance consisting solely of machines, multi-screen projections and Richard H. Kirk,” and if you’re wondering, it seems that the surmise that Stephen Mallinder will not be involved is correct. (By the way, they used the exact same odd phrasing in press releases for their 2015 shows.)

In the 1970s Cabaret Voltaire was one of the pre-eminent pioneers of industrial and electronic music, generating albums as sinister and funky as Red Mecca and The Crackdown; it’s safe to say that anything under the banner of Cabaret Voltaire is worthy of interest by definition.

It’s true that Cabaret Voltaire played gigs all over continental Europe in 2015 and 2016, but Kirk and his doodads neglected to hit the British Isles. The useful website setlist.fm includes information on a 2011 show in the Horse Hospital in the Bloomsbury neighborhood of London, but that was actually a screening of the 1982 movie Johnny Yesno, a movie for which Cabaret Voltaire did the soundtrack. The last Cabaret Voltaire show in the U.K. before that was at the Gardner Center in Brighton on November 29, 1992.

The more interesting news is that Kirk has recently made a commitment, in an interview with FACT, to keep upcoming CV shows devoid of old material:
 

It’s totally new, I don’t play anything from the past. I think being 60, it feels more dignified than a band full of old guys wobbling about on a stage. I’ve been a big fan of Miles Davis for many years and he would never play anything from the past and the only time he ever did that was before he died. I just feel like, what’s the point? It’s not going anywhere, who wants to be playing stuff that you did 30 years ago and constantly repeating yourself? I always make it really clear that if you think you’re going to come and hear the greatest hits then don’t come because you’re not. What you might get is the same spirit.

 
More after the jump…

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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03.24.2017
08:00 am
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‘Souls of Dead Children’ and other creepy field recordings by Cabaret Voltaire founder Chris Watson


Photo by Kate Humble, via chriswatson.net
 
Chris Watson is the coolest. He’s most famous as one of the three founding members of Cabaret Voltaire. Since leaving the Cabs in ‘81, he’s continued to make experimental music (see, for instance, his wonderful 2005 collaboration with KK Null and Z’EV), but he’s best known for his field recordings. BBC Radio 4 has a whole page dedicated to programs that feature Watson and his work; if you’re not careful, you can lose yourself for hours there listening to stories like “Wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson presents the crested tit.”

Richard H. Kirk is, of course, the longest-lasting (and sole remaining) member of Cabaret Voltaire, but I wonder if it’s significant that Watson’s name got top billing on the back cover of the Cabs’ first two albums. Watson’s attic was the band’s practice space from ‘74 to ‘78, and Kirk credits his distinctive guitar sound on the first records to a fuzzbox Watson, then a phone engineer, built for him. (Check out the Burroughsian news cut-up Watson contributed to a 1981 tape compilation released by Jhonn Balance.)
 

Photo by Mark McNulty, via McNulty Photography
 
When Watson quit Cabaret Voltaire in ‘81, it was to take a job with Tyne Tees Television, where, he says, his career in sound recording began. Since 1996’s Stepping into the Dark, a collection of recordings of “the atmospheres of special places” inspired by T.C. Lethbridge, Watson has released a total of six albums of his field recordings. Each is organized around an idea or story. El Tren Fantasma (“Ghost Train”) is an audio trip across Mexico on the old state-owned railroad, which no longer exists, thanks to the economic miracle that is privatization. His latest album, In St. Cuthbert’s Time, documents what Eadfrith of Lindisfarne would have heard while he was creating the Lindisfarne Gospels.

After the jump, three sinister selections from ‘Outside the Circle of Fire

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Posted by Oliver Hall
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09.01.2016
09:22 am
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Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder drops another dynamite Soundcloud mix
08.12.2016
09:43 am
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If you’re looking for someone to put together a killer mix, you could hardly do better than Stephen Mallinder, pioneer of industrial music and co-founder of Cabaret Voltaire. Although then again, it’s a little strange to seek out a dance mix from a man who once adhered to the forbidding watchword “We will not allow any dancing.” But Mallinder is surely comfortable with ironies of that sort.

Two years ago Mallinder put together a mix called “Before Electricity” for FilthyBroke Recordings, based in Providence, Rhode Island, and just this week he dropped what they’re calling “Part Two,” which has the title “Wonk.”

In 1976 Cabaret Voltaire put out a truly limited edition cassette called, er, Limited Edition that had a run of 25. “Wonk” has already gotten wider distribution than that, having been played by 171 people (including me).

Mallinder has been involved with many outfits over the years, including Acid Horse, Hey, Rube!, and Ku-Ling Bros. His most recent project is Wrangler, which includes Ben Edward of John Foxx and the Maths and Phil Winter of Tunng. They put out an album this year called Sparked: Modular Remix Project.

Put “Wonk” on at your next party and then when people ask who’s responsible for those arresting beats, just say casually, “Oh yeah, that’s Stephen Mallinder, you know, of Cabaret Voltaire. He dropped this mix the other week…..”
 
Listen to Mallinder’s “Wonk” mix after the jump…...

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Posted by Martin Schneider
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08.12.2016
09:43 am
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When Joy Division met William S. Burroughs


 
When you consider all of the famous and infamous people who William Burroughs met in his lifetime, maybe the “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” game should be adapted for the late Beat author. I’d have a “Burroughs” of one, as I met him (briefly) in Los Angeles in 1996 at his big art opening at LACMA.

At the Reality Studio blog, there’s a fascinating tale, told in great detail, about the time Joy Division shared the same stage with Burroughs, Brion Gysin and Cabaret Voltaire in Belgium. Ian Curtis was an avid reader and favored counterculture fare like J.G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre and Hermann Hesse. William Burroughs was one of his biggest heroes.

Joy Division was given its first opportunity to play outside the United Kingdom on 16 October 1979. That alone would have distinguished the gig for the band, but of special interest to Curtis and his mates was the fact that they would be opening for Burroughs. The avant-garde theater troupe Plan K, which had made a specialty of interpreting Burroughs’ work, were founding a performance space in a former sugar refinery in Brussels, Belgium. The opening was conceived as a multimedia spectacle. Films were to be screened — among others, Nicholas Roeg’s Performance (starring Mick Jagger) and Burroughs’ own experiments with Antony Balch. The Plan K theater troupe were to perform “23 Skidoo.” Joy Division and Cabaret Voltaire were to give “rock” concerts. And Burroughs and Brion Gysin were to read from their recently published book, The Third Mind.

Before the evening’s events, Burroughs and Joy Division gave separate interviews to the culture magazine En Attendant. Graciously provided to RealityStudio by the interviewer and the organizer of the Plan K opening, Michel Duval, these have been translated from the French and are reproduced here for the first time since their publication in November 1979. You can read the French original or the English translation of Duval’s interview with Joy Division, as well as the French original or the English translation of Duval’s interview with William Burroughs.

After Burroughs’ reading brought the opening of Plan K to its climax, Curtis attempted to introduce himself to his literary idol. This meeting, like so many things about both Curtis and Burroughs, has already become legend — which is another way of saying that its factual basis may have receded into darkness. If you search around the internet, you’ll see sites describing the encounter in terms like this: “Unfortunately when Ian went up to talk to him the author told Ian to get lost.” And this: “Burroughs probably was tired and bored with the concerts and when Ian went up to talk with him the author told Ian to get lost. Ian got lost immediately, not a little hurt by the rebuff.” Chris Ott’s book Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures repeats the story, and Mark Johnson’s book An Ideal for Living asserts that Burroughs refused to speak to Curtis.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.28.2016
12:43 pm
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Can ya dig it? Cabaret Voltaire’s insane version of Isaac Hayes’ ‘Theme from Shaft’
07.23.2015
09:13 am
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By forming in 1973, Cabaret Voltaire managed the neat trick of embodying and codifying many of the aesthetic tropes, sounds, and strategies of post-punk before punk existed in the first place, serving as an indisputable influence on both the industrial noise and industrial dance scenes. A 1981 break with founding member Chris Watson saw the band turn away from difficult-but-rewarding noise to embrace New Wave accessibility. Remaining original members Stephen Mallinder and Richard Kirk continued to make excellent records through 1985, but by 1987’s Code the band had been far surpassed by its own imitators, and soon they’d be nakedly trying to retain relevance by glomming on to acid house. Watson went on to work as a recording engineer and make strange music with the wonderful Hafler Trio, a project that long remained as archly experimental and fascinating as CV were in the beginning.

But before Watson left, and while CV were still about utter disregard for pop norms, they recorded a warped and delirious version of Isaac Hayes’ theme song from the film Shaft. Session details aren’t easy to come by, but it was recorded sometime during the Voice of America/Red Mecca era, 1980/81ish. It wasn’t released until 1988s excellent Eight Crepuscule Tracks compilation, which collected early CV work recorded for the Les Disques du Crépuscule label (“Twilight Records,” roughly), a still-extant Belgian imprint once associated with Factory Benelux.
 

 
The song indulges in some cheeky humor not typically associated with the often rather grim early industrial scene. It’s almost entirely built on samples, looping the song’s distinctive guitar intro, horn, and flute themes for just about ever, and piling snatches of film dialogue atop that bed, forecasting by almost a decade the short-lived House fad for novelty tracks built on movie dialogue samples. The result is at once ominous and darkly comical.

The remake was later included on the 1991 album Moving Soundtracks Volume 1, a terrific Crépuscule compilation of film music covers made by its associated artists. It’s hard to come by; the easier-to-find 2008 reissue, disappointingly, does not include “Theme from Shaft.”
 

 
For your enjoyment, Isaac Hayes’ indelible original after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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07.23.2015
09:13 am
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‘TV Wipeout’: Cabaret Voltaire’s rigorously post-punk 1984 video compilation resurfaces
06.17.2015
03:36 pm
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John Coulthart has unearthed an utterly marvelous find from the early days of mass-produced video music content—Cabaret Voltaire’s TV Wipeout, a “video magazine” that was released on VHS in 1984. Watching it today, TV Wipeout is an excellent approximation of late-night avant-garde music programming from the early 1980s like Night Flight, albeit less scattershot and more rigorously postpunk in perspective. Of course, Cabaret Voltaire were often featured on Night Flight themselves.
 

TV Wipeout, videotape cover
 
As Coulthart explains, “This was the fourth title on the Cab’s own Doublevision label which was easily the best of the UK’s independent video labels at the time.” The compilation has plenty of gems. TV Wipeout features an interview with David Bowie on his latest movie, Nagisa Oshima’s Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, excerpts from two Andy Warhol movies (Heat and Flesh), concert and documentary footage from the Fall at their creative peak, a video by Residents discovery Renaldo and the Loaf, footage of Marc Almond covering a Lou Reed song, and excerpts from cult classics like Plan Nine from Outer Space and Eating Raoul.

The footage of the Fall was taped at the The Venue in London on March 21, 1983. Their rendition of “Words of Expectation” is interrupted by an astonishing clip of the Fall’s manager, Kay Carroll, tearing the Factory’s Tony Wilson a new asshole for using some Fall music on a video without their permission.
 

(Click for a larger version)
 
On the next-to-last video, Marc & The Mambas cover Lou Reed’s “Caroline Says II” off of Berlin. For the first half of the song, Marc Almond is holding Genesis P-Orridge’s infant daughter Caresse in his arms until she starts to cry.

Coulthart also found a pretty hilarious interview in which Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder had the following to say about TV Wipeout (source: Cabaret Voltaire: The Art of the Sixth Sense by M. Fish and D. Hallbery):
 

Q: The next Doublevision was the TV Wipeout video which was a sort of disposable magazine compilation. It contained a fairly wide variety of contributors, from people like The Fall and Test Dept to some more mainstream groups like Bill Nelson and Japan.

Mallinder: The point was that Virgin Films were quite happy to work with us; they even gave us money in the form of advertising revenue for using some film clips from the Virgin catalogue. We were then able to camouflage them into the whole set-up and make them look as if they were part of the whole nature of the video compilation.

Q: One of those clips was a particularly inane interview with David Bowie. Was its inclusion merely a selling point?

Mallinder: Yes, it was purely that. There are a lot of people who will buy anything with David Bowie on it. So we said “Fuck it, why not use that as a selling point!” Actually the interview is appalling, it’s terrible. Our including it was almost like a piss-take. We were saying “you really will buy anything with David Bowie on it if you buy this”.

 
Coulthart asserts that some clips of Cabaret Voltaire and Japan are missing from this playlist, but I think that’s not right, at least if the list posted above is right, it’s just the Japan track that is missing, and you can find that one here.
 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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06.17.2015
03:36 pm
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‘We use the music as an exorcism’: Cabaret Voltaire takes over ‘Night Flight,’ 1985
02.25.2015
11:49 am
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For many ‘80s teens, the dearly beloved USA Network program Night Flight was a gateway to a whole wide world of cool shit that wasn’t being played anywhere else. There were definitely plenty of Friday or Saturday nights I spent gaping at J-Men Forever or a full Neil Young concert. In some ways Cabaret Voltaire was a perfect Night Flight band, both finding inspiration in European experimental art of the early twentieth century: Night Flight was named after an Antoine de Saint-Exupéry book, and Cabaret Voltaire was named after a legendary dada nightclub in Zurich.

On this particular summer night in 1985—the commercials for John Candy’s Summer Rental and Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits Volume I & Volume II indicate the timing—Night Flight turned over a half hour of programming for what it called an “exclusive documentary” about the Sheffield postpunk masters.

Truly, hats off to the people at Night Flight for executing this in a way that the band itself might have dreamt up. The interview portions consist entirely of footage of Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson speaking to the camera—there’s no stilted Q&A with a network stooge, it’s all suffused in an ashen b/w mode that is entirely in keeping with the videos we see, of “Just Fascination,” “Crackdown,” and “a special 8-minute version of ‘Sensoria’.” (I’m not sure, but I think this is the 12-inch version that was later included on #8385 Collected Works (1983-1985).)
 

 
In the interview bits, Mallinder says, “If we tried to be straightforward and direct, then it would be contrary to what we are as people, and music’s just an extension of what we are as people,” later saying, “We use the music as an exorcism.” Cabaret Voltaire was never a cheery bunch, and if you’re not into postpunk this entire half-hour will seem not much different from a dreary Sprockets imitation. If so, your loss, dummy!

Also heard during the segment are chunks of “Nag Nag Nag,” “Seconds Too Late,” and “Diskono.”
 

 

Posted by Martin Schneider
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02.25.2015
11:49 am
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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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Do It Yourself: The Story of Rough Trade
05.03.2010
11:59 am
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Yet another essential recent BBC music doc, this time a fascinating glimpse into the history of the seminal indie label/empire Rough Trade. More beloved late 70’s post punk records are touched upon than would be wise to list, but I was particulary awestruck to see footage of the original lineup of Scritti Politti sitting in a dilapidated bedsit earnestly hand-assembling the epochal “Skank Bloc Bologna” single. Founder Geoff Travis comes across as a passive aggressive faux-naif with faultless taste and a talent for the elusive right place/right time nexus. Watch, learn and listen.
above photo : Genesis P-Orridge delivers the 2nd Throbbing Gristle L.P. D.O.A. to Geoff Travis @ Rough Trade HQ, 1978
 

 

 

Posted by Brad Laner
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05.03.2010
11:59 am
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