Forty Minutes Of Cabaret Voltaire

Cabaret Voltaire, Sheffield's pioneering industrial noise/ post- punk/ electro outfit, have announced a tour this November with gigs in their home town, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow and London and are promising a gig that will take in fifty years of CV music. They formed in Sheffield in 1973, Richard H. Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson and were a genuinely trailblazing band, innovative and influential. Some of you may have noted that founder member Richard H. Kirk is no longer with us. He died in 2021. The decision to tour without him (and Mallinder and Kirk had not worked together for some time when Richard was alive) has caused some dissent among the fanbase, some people saying that without him it's not Cabaret Voltaire while others and the two surviving members want to pay tribute with one last run around the block and blast the music out of big amps into small(ish) spaces. I guess you pays your money and you takes your choice. The gigs are sold out anyway. 

Cabaret Voltaire were uncompromising. Initially they wanted their music to be difficult and to piss people off. They were happy with confrontation. They also wanted to make music without musical instruments and at first used reel to reel tapes, sound collages, oscillators and home- made kit. Later they brought traditional instruments in- bass guitar, guitar, clarinet. Their early punk/ post- punk connections with Joy Division and Factory, Rough Trade, Throbbing Gristle, Clock DVA and via their Sheffield recording studio Western Works brought them press, gigs and a record deal. Chris Watson left in 1981 and Mallinder and Kirk carried on as a duo, navigating the 80s and becoming more accessible, more commercial, eventually finding common ground with 80s synth based artists and the electronic/ acid house scene. You can find a potted history of the various twists and turns here. I thought a Cabaret Voltaire Sunday mix was well overdue and there's a lot of music to go at so this doesn't do much more than scratch the surface...

Forty Minutes Of Cabaret Voltaire

• Yashar (John Robie Mix)
• Don't Argue (Dance)
• Just Fascination (12" Mix)
• Thank You America (Kevorkian Bonus Beats)
• Sensoria
• Sex In Secret
• Colours (Club Mix)

Yashar is from 1982, originally appearing on a CV double disc 12" pack. A year later John Robie's remix came out on Factory, one of Factory's key mid- 80s singles (Fac 82 on Factory, FBN 25 on Factory Benelux). The sample that opens it- 'there 70 billion people of Earth- where are they hiding?'- is from the American TV programme The Outer Limits, a 60s sci fi/ horror/ mystery show. Yashar then judders and skips through the next seven minutes, 80s industrial electro, horns, synths, the chanted title- amazing stuff.  

Don't Argue was a 1987 single, produced by the group and Adrian Sherwood. The vocal sample is from a 1945 American propaganda film directed by Frank Capra at the dawn of the Cold War, a film called Your Job In Germany aimed at US soldiers stationed in post- war Germany. Don't Argue is as accessible as CV got in some ways, a fusion of industrial and synth- pop. 

Don't Argue then appeared on Code, their album from the same year along with Thank You America. The Thank You America (Kevorkian Bonus Beats) were remixed by New York legend Francis Kevorkian, stuttering beats, handclaps, echo. Cold War dread and paranoia, fears about the USA and nuclear weapons- it's almost like we've gone nowhere since 1987...

Just Fascination was a 1983 single, the B-side to Crackdown. Some Cabs menace and unease but not coupled with funk/ dance rhythms, with sequencers and keys. The album The Crackdown came out on Some Bizarre, the duo making their way through the UK's independent record labels one by one. The vocals are getting clearer and clearer, more willing to be heard. 

Sensoria came out in 1984, a single from the Micro- Phonies album. Sensoria is thumpy, crushing mid- 80s synth, pounding dancefloor energy, men and machines in sync. The poster for the single is one of the posters on Ferris Bueller's bedroom wall in the film about his day off. 

Sex In Secret is from the very first Factory Records release in 1978- the first music release that is. Fac 1 was a Peter Saville poster. Fac 2 was a double pack of 7" singles, with music from Joy Division, The Durutti Column, John Dowie and the Cabs. It was re- released on 1990's Listen Up with Cabaret Voltaire, a cassette compilation out on Mute that pulled together tracks from various one off releases- NME cassettes, videos, flexi- discs and a couple of unreleased tracks. 

Colours was from 1991, a seven track mini- album. By the early 90s Mallinder and Kirk were separated by distance, Kirk in Sheffield and Mallinder in London, and both threw themselves into acid house and solo/ collaborations. Kirk made the first Bleep Techno record as Sweet Exorcist along with DJ Richard Parrot, the mighty Testone 12", a definitive 1990 record. Colours is acid house, bleepy and light on its feet, a day glo version of the Cabaret Voltaire sound. 

Forty Minutes Of Fac

In the 1980s Factory Records was the best record label in the world. Based on Palatine Road, a stone's throw from where I grew up, managed as a Marxist art project, bankrolled by New Order and home to a bunch of sullen, wilful experimental artists who famously signed no contracts and owned all their music, it put out record after record, almost none of which were hits. Today's mix is a small selection of the magnificence that came out of Factory in the mid- 80s (deliberately leaving out New Order), a period where the combined talents clustered around the table at 86 Palatine Road produced such life affirming and ground breaking music. 

Forty Minutes Of Fac

• Cabaret Voltaire: Yashar (John Robie Remix)
• Quando Quango: Genius
• Stockholm Monsters: All At Once
• Section 25: Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix)
• Marcel King: Reach For Love
• A Certain Ratio: Mickey Way (The Candy Bar)
• Durutti Column: For Belgian Friends

Yashar (John Robie Remix) by Cabaret Voltaire is Fac 82. Cabaret Voltaire released just this single 12" for Factory. 

Genius by Quando Quango is Fact 137. Quando Quango were formed in Rotterdam by Mike Pickering with Hillegonda Rietveld and Reinier Rietveld with former ACR singer Simon Topping joining on percussion. 

All At Once by Stockholm Monsters is Fac 107. Stockholm Monsters are the best band to come out of Burnage. 

Looking From A Hilltop (Megamix) by Section 25 is Fac 108, released in 1984, and still sounds like the future. It was produced by Donald Johnson of ACR and Bernard Sumner of New Order as Be Music. 

Reach For Love by Marcel King is FBN 43, released in 1985, and should have been number one in every country in the world. Also produced by Bernard Sumner and Donald Johnson. 

Mickey Way (The Candy Bar) by A Certain Ratio is Fac 168 from 1986. It was also on the album Force, ACR's last album for Factory (Fact 166). 

For Belgian Friends is by Durutti Column and first appeared on A Factory Quartet, Fact 24, in 1980 and then on Valuable Passages, a Durutti Column compilation from 1986 Fac 164. Donald Johnson plays drums. Vini Reilly is one of the true geniuses to be found on Palatine Road during the period. He still lives nearby. 

Richard H. Kirk

Just under a year ago I wrote a post about the then new Cabaret Voltaire album Shadow Of One and only last week I found my burned CD of it in the car and put it on a pile of albums to revisit. Shadow Of One saw Cabaret Voltaire reduced to the core of founder Richard H. Kirk, Stephen Mallinder having departed sometime before. Sadly news started to come out of Sheffield the day before yesterday that Richard had died aged 65.

 Cabaret Voltaire's influence and presence in the shadows and half light since the mid- 70s (pre- punk) as electronic/ sampling/ sound mangling/ industrial pioneers is immense. Kirk once said that electronic music was a great way to make music 'if you weren't the world's greatest musician' and that's where their importance lies- they had ideas, ambitions and creativity and via tape machines, DIY synths and electronics and video they paved a way for non- musicians to make great music. By the time they signed to Virgin and then EMI in the 80s they were surfing the wave of what would become dance music/ acid house. 

I've posted the 12" single they released on Factory in 1982 previously on three or four occasions. Yashar (plus the John Robie remix on the B-side) is one of the crucial early Factory releases. I can't imagine my record collection without it. 

Sensoria from 1984 is industrial dance music, crunching drum machines and a full sound, melodic synth lines, ascending chords, a guitar part, vocals laid on top, brief snatches of backing vox and a sampled voice- all the sort of thing that would be commonplace by 1990. 

Sensoria (12" Mix)

As well as the Cabs Richard made music under a bewildering number of aliases- some sublime dub techno as Sandoz not to mention Al Jabr, King Of Kings, The Revolutionary Army Of The Infant Jesus, Wicky Wacky, Future Cop Movies and numerous others. In 1989 Richard was ahead of the game again, fired up by house and the new sounds of the underground, he formed Sweet Exorcist with Richard Barrett and put out Testone on Warp. Minimal, tough bleep techno from the steel city. Futuristic music with few obvious forebears- it still sounds like the future. 

Testone 

Richard H. Kirk R.I.P. 

Shadow Of Fear

If you're after a dystopic album to soundtrack your life-and given the state of the world why wouldn't you?- then you could do a lot worse than the new release from Sheffield's post- punk pioneers Cabaret Voltaire and the new one, Shadow Of Fear. The Cabs are now the vehicle of one man, founder and multi- instrumentalist Richard H. Kirk, who recorded the nine songs at the famous Western Works studio in his hometown. Whether it is really Cabaret Voltaire without long standing but now departed partner Stephen Mallinder is open to question I suppose but we'll let that pass. At first having read a couple of reviews and an interview I thought Shadow Of Fear might be a bleak and oppressive listen, impressive but not an album to return to very often but that isn't the case and while it's definitely ominous and industrial it's got dance rhythms and textures and some glints of light among the shade. Mechanised drums, sampled disembodied voices, dashes of acid, some fuzzy, distorted guitars and basslines and layers of noise. It's urgent and has an energy and shows the sixty- four year old Kirk still has something to say and still has the tools to say it with. 

Back in 1983 Cabaret Voltaire released Yashar, a12" single on Factory. Yashar and the John Robie remix on the B side is one of the peaks of Factory's early 80s (and that's a crowded field). A record very of its time and ahead of it too. 

'There's 70 billion people on earth'

'Where are they hiding?'

Yashar

Yashar (John Robie Mix)

Yashar

Friday's Factory treat today is from across the Pennines due East, from deepest Sheffield in 1982, by Cabaret Voltaire. A vocal sample asks 'There's 70 billion people on Earth. Where are they hiding?' over some early 80s industrial electro. The 12" single came with a John Robie remix which turned it further in the direction of the dancefloor but I've posted that before and the original is still worth your time. There's a staff social on tonight at a bar in town. I'd be highly surprised if Cabaret Voltaire get played.

Yashar

There's 70 Billion People On Earth; Where Are They Hiding?

We're in Sheffield this weekend; steel city, sex city, seven hills, Wednesday and United, industrial and electronic music capital of South Yorkshire. To celebrate Sheffield's rich musical history here's some Cabaret Voltaire from 1982, released on Factory from other side of the Pennines.

Yashar

Cabaret Voltaire 'Yashar' (John Robie Mix 1)

Cabaret Voltaire were a pair of serious, doomy, Sheffield men who made serious, industrial, doomy, scary, sinister, electronic, bass heavy music in the late 70s and early 80s, and then forged early house/electronica. Records like Sensoria and Nag Nag Nag have regularly been held up as influential. On last year's BBC4 Synth Britannia programme they came across as likeable, down-to-earth blokes who liked a pint and a bit of Ballard. In 1982 they released this on Factory- Yashar (Fac 82 Fac fans). It's a spooky record with a Cold War-ish vocal sample ('There's 70 billion people out there, where are they hiding?'), mixed in with Eastern drones and early drum machines. On the B-side of the 12" John Robie remixed it, doubling the length, and adding synths and that early 80s Fact-ness, to send it in the direction of the dancefloor. Although most dancefloors in most clubs at the time would clear pretty quickly once it got going I would imagine. Brilliant record, and although I could be corrected on this, an early example of the art of the remix.

02 Yashar (John Robie Mix 1).mp3