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 Five Minutes Of Ultramarine

A few weeks ago an email arrived promising a new album from the duo Ultramarine- it is in fact a new old album, thirteen previously unheard and unreleased recordings from 1996- 7 about to be compiled as Routine and released by Blackford Hill. A single, Sunrise, came out on Friday as a taster and it's been part of my commuting playlist for the past fortnight, three and a half minutes of sunlit synths, keys and a hissy drum machine, and very nice indeed.

Ultramarine were/ are London and Essex duo Paul Hammond and Ian Cooper and back in the early 90s their fusion of ambient/ ambient house and folk was a refreshing and very English pastoral sound. Their best known song, Kingdom, saw them recruit Robert Wyatt on vocals and over the course of several albums they refined their sound and always stayed interesting- 1990's Folk, 1991's Every Man And Woman Is A Star and 1993's United Kingdoms were all essential early 90s electronic/ ambient/ folk and they've made four in the 2010s that have kept the standard high. Routine is available at Bandcamp for pre- order ahead of its release in July. Some of the track titles- Avebury, Crop Circle 5am, Runic Calibration and Astro Navigation- are pure Ultramarine. 

I thought a Sunday mix to accompany the new single was in order and revisiting their music this week has been a joy. The tracks below are all from the duo's 90s recordings and are perfect for a Sunday in May even if the weather isn't doing quite what it should be. 

Forty Five Minutes Of Ultramarine

• Kingdom (Extended Mix)
• Hymn (Kevin Ayres Version)
• The Badger (Remixed By Richard H. Kirk)
• Goldcrest
• British Summertime
• Stella
• Interstella (Stella)
• Sunrise

Kingdom came out in 1993 with Robert Wyatt on vocals, the nearest they got to a hit. Wyatt's doleful, haunting, double tracked voice singing words of Medieval suffering and protest- 'We're low, we're low, we're rabble we know, mere rabble we know' and 'We're not too low the cloth to weave/ Too low the cloth to wear'. The folky/ Medieval pipes and 90s electronic squelch sound superb together. Goldcrest was the B-side of the Kingdom 12". The album United Kingdoms followed complete Incredible String Band sample. The Badger was also on United Kingdoms, one of several tracks remixed by among others Carl Craig and Fila Brazillia, and the one here by Cabaret Voltaire's Richard H. Kirk. 

Hymn is a cover of a 1974 Kevin Ayres song, and came out in 1994, the sumptuous Ultramarine electronic sound and traditional instruments- accordion, clarinet- plus the voice of David McAlmont. The version I've included here has Kevin singing and came out on a remixes EP. 

British Summertime was on 1991's Every Man And Woman Is A Star album, an ambient techno/ house classic, the folk influences seamlessly stitched in with early 90s technology, an ambient hippy/ folk crossover. The word pastoral was used a lot in reviews and the folky/ jazzy sound of the late 60s Canterbury scene, John Martyn and Rob Harper, that gentle English psychedelia, was a very strong presence on the album's dozen tracks. 

Stella and Interstella were a 1990 single recorded for Belgian Le Disques Du Crepuscule in 1989 (a Factory sister label). They are always together for me, Stella and Interstella, and separating them seems wrong. They were added to the group's first album Folk, also released by Le Disques Du Crepuscule in 1990, an album that crosses boundaries from psyche to house to Balearic and back again, breakbeats and folk. Stella bounces around, bleeps and bass and warm synth chords, the 'You and me together' sample at its heart. Interstella (Stella) in particular is a dream record, ambient house, acoustic guitar and vocal samples, a voice saying 'I can do anything' perfectly encapsulating the feel of the times, when music was infused with the sense of endless possibility. 

Sunrise is from the forthcoming Routine album, which is where this post started. 

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.