Introduction

LIVE AT THE Y.M.C.A. (1980)
1) Untitled; 2) On Every Other Street; 3) Nag, Nag, Nag; 4) The Set Up; 5) Expect Nothing; 6) Havoc; 7) Here She Comes Now; 8) No Escape; 9) Baader Meinhof.
The Prince Of Wales Conference Centre YMCA, London, England must have been a pretty som­ber public location back in 1979 — this murky Cabaret Voltaire performance was recorded there, on a scrumpy cassette player, barely two months after both Joy Division and Throbbing Gristle had played some historically important shows there. But these were exciting times indeed, so that even the Young Men's Christian Association had no choice but to indirectly lend their support to artists providing strong doses of suicidal sounds to the general public. Or, if not suicidal, then at least those that appeal to the beast inside.
The sound quality here is predictably appalling, and the whole experience looks and feels serious­ly bootleggish, despite counting as a thoroughly official release — but then again, you couldn't expect anything different from a band whose main point was to join the guitar and the synthesi­zer in an unholy union of eternal gray ugliness. At least this time around they are not attacked by their audience (which seems to have been a common thing in the early days of their career), who politely sit back, spend most of their time chatting about the final independence of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (well, probably not, but it was October 27, 1979), and sometimes respectably clap their hands when they think a certain song is over (meaning, of course, that fairly often they clap in the wrong place, or do not clap when they are supposed to clap).
In the meantime, Mallinder, Watson, and Kirk are busy doing their thing, playing stuff from their most recent LP, from the less recent Extended Play EP, or from nowhere in particular, creating a sonic environment that goes best with black and white photography, lots of cigarette smoke, post-structuralism, and dull razor blades. Com­parison with the studio equivalents shows that they stick fairly close to the grooves, atmospheres, and even to the subtle developments of the originals — but without the smallest amount of pro­duction gloss, these atmospheres sound even wilder, murkier, and nastier, especially Kirk's guitar tones, resonating more deeply and making use of all that extra distortion. Which is interesting, because it really puts these guys more in line with the underground / proto-punk scene of The Velvet Underground and The Stooges, after all, than in with subsequent generations of electronic artists. But then, they'd probably take offense if you called them electronic artists.
Actually, there is even a whole new Velvet Underground cover here: ʽHere She Comes Nowʼ (originally recorded for Extended Play), which you could probably only recognize by the distinctly pronounced lines "ah, she looks so good, ah, she's made out of wood", since everything else is mutated and converted to the usual gray textures (distorted droning guitar, distorted white-noise-choked organ, deep trance-inducing vocals, simplistic-tribalistic drum machine, etc.). But even if it is changed beyond recognition in form, it totally retains the mean spirit — I'm sure Lou would appreciate. In fact, he'd probably dig this entire show more than anyone.
They do also demonstrate, however, that they are not altogether above the art of the pop hook: not only do they do ʽNo Escapeʼ in all its primal Seeds glory, but there is at least one new song, ʽNag Nag Nagʼ, that also sounds like a modernized version of some old garage rocker, with a shrill, irritating, but catchy little keyboard riff that goes along with the appropriate "nag nag nag" chorus and an amusingly vivacious set of drum machine rolls. Somehow, the audience does not exactly latch on to this, and rewards the band with the usual flimsy applause at the end, but that's what you get after masking your rock'n'roll heart with an industrial sarcophagus for so long.
Towards the end of the show, the arrogance gets out of control and the last track is ʽBaader Meinhofʼ, where they simply retransmit Red Army Faction messages to isolated blasts of feed­back and electronic hoots and howls, get a final round of applause from all the young anti-That­cherites in the audience, and retreat into their dim spider webs for some deserved rest. All in all, this is a somewhat fascinating piece of history, though I can hardly imagine a lot of people get­ting inspired by it today; but come to think of it, this re-grafting of decade-old garage rock values with the futuristic coldness of Krautrock may well have sounded as bizarre and mind-opening at the time as, say, Pink Floyd's experiments at the UFO Club circa 1966. But you'd probably still rather listen to a nicely produced copy of Piper these days than to a bootleg recording of any of the UFO sessions — and the same applies to this performance as well.
THE VOICE OF AMERICA (1980)
1) The Voice Of America / Damage Is Done; 2) Partially Submerged; 3) Kneel To The Boss; 4) Premonition; 5) This Is Entertainment; 6) If The Shadows Could March; 7) Stay Out Of It; 8) Obsession; 9) News From Nowhere; 10) Messages Received.
A little better produced than Mix-Up, perhaps, but not much different in mood, style, or effect, The Voice Of America is a fairly distorted idea of America, I would say, as seen from the per­spective of this ever-so-English band. If we are to believe in this, «America» in 1980 was a post-apocalyptic half-bore, half-nightmare, a gray, desolate place populated almost exclusively by robotic mutants communicating through digital signals and tape loops. There would hardly be any place for a Prince or a Michael Jackson or even an Olivia Newton-John in such an America — then again, we could always make the argument that Cabaret Voltaire, with their eye in the sky, were able to see right through all these skins and quickly get to the essence.
Anyway, The Voice Of America is not nearly as unlistenable as some sources would have you believe. Ever so often, a track will start out with a blast of noise that seems to be coming out of a freshly bombed electrical substation — but then it quickly subsides in favor of yet another cozy little robotic groove, going pssht-pssht (that's «C.V. soft rock») or thwack-thwack («C. V. hard rock») or twang-twang (that's «C.V. impersonation of Australian aboriginal music»), with enough diversity to keep you believing that it is not the exact same psycho-image that never stops flowing through their brains while they're busy getting on tape. Whether this is a correct belief, I am not sure — in the end, all these recordings still seem to serve the same purpose.
The band only becomes truly unlistenable when it abandons its rhythmic base to make room for some free-form improvisation — ʽPartially Submergedʼ sounds like a rusty old see-saw swinging back and forth, while a pair of aspiring, but tonedeaf sax players are practicing like mad within the confines of the same abandoned playground. Not as nasty as it could be, but I can promise you some fairly ugly sounds here; the rest of the record is far more musical, sometimes even hummable, even if you have to wait to the very end to get to the only actual «song» — ʽMessages Receivedʼ. That one would seem to be a conscious imitation of classic Joy Division style, but with shitty distorted guitar noise replacing discernible melody.
Everything else is mildly cool — somewhat tame by the old Krautrock standards, and frequently spoiled by the vocals (I think the album would have worked better as a completely instrumental set, but I guess those brutal «young punk» intonations were very much a genre convention around 1980), but not without its own bit of decadent-robotic charm. However, you can still feel they are in their boot camp stage at the moment: they have the style all figured out, but none of the com­positions have any sense of purpose — mostly, it's just experimentation for the sake of it, a use­ful, but not too artistically relevant exploration of new studio possibilities. For instance, on ʽNews From Nowhereʼ they discover that they can imitate racing cars with their instruments, and then proceed to do exactly that for two and a half minutes, like little kids who just discovered a bunch of awesome buttons. Kinda cool, but that's what the word «dated» is for. Another short track is called ʽIf The Shadows Could Marchʼ — to be honest, sounds more like ʽIf The Shadows Could Trotʼ, but there's no sense in arguing over associative thinking; the important thing is, it's fifty-five seconds of not-too-threatening electronic pulses, and that's that.
The good news is that most of the stuff, as usual, is danceable, and even today you could safely use this stuff at any electronic rave party with a retro fetish. But the bad news is that even with all the grooves and the toe-tapping, they are still boring, and their appeal is at best purely intellectual. Unless you make a point of collecting early Eighties' electronics and avantagarde stuff, The Voice Of America is perfectly skippable.
1974-76 (1980)
1) The Dada Man; 2) Ooraseal; 3) A Sunday Night In Biot; 4) In Quest Of The Unusual; 5) Do The Snake; 6) Fade Crisis; 7) Doubled Delivery; 8) Venusian Animals; 9) The Outer Limits; 10) She Loved You.
Now that the band was a firmly established underground act, the time was deemed ripe for dig­ging into their back catalog — they'd made their first recordings in the mid-Seventies, but had neither a proper distributor back then nor a lot of people who'd listen. Actually, even in 1980 the only label that'd carry this stuff was the Throbbing Gristle-owned Industrial Records, who only released it in cassette form; not until 1992 did it get a CD release.
And I don't have to tell you the reason why — this stuff is far more hardcore than even Mix-Up, let alone everything that followed. These, indeed, are industrial experiments that predate the band's fascination with dance music, meaning that you are going to get the same bleeps, beeps, bells, and whistles, but with a «factory setting» rather than «club setting». Actually, there is a rhythmic base to most of the tracks, either provided by a very faintly ticking drum machine or by the synthesized «melody loops» themselves — the only thing that provides some structure and order — but it does take a fairly wide understanding of music to agree that this is music (not that it is in any way more hardcore than Throbbing Gristle, but it does make everything they'd done after that look like a pathetic sellout program by comparison).
A few of the tracks do dig into the musical past, posing as sneery deconstructions or futuristic tributes: ʽDo The Snakeʼ plays like a robot-engineered parody on an early Sixties dance craze (although the mock-idiotic vocals are more in the vein of the B-52's: apparently, at that early hyper-experimental stage Cabaret Voltaire still had a lighter sense of humor than in the classic days to come), and ʽShe Loved Youʼ recites the lyrics to ʽShe Loves Youʼ in a slow, dark whisper, as the electronics hum and whirr around you with the predictable reliability of old, creaky equip­ment in an antiquated factory.
Does it all make sense? Not to my ears, it doesn't. But it does sound like a logical precursor to Autechre and all those other trendy Nineties' electronic bands — whose main achievement, let's face it, was to simply harness the technology in a way in which Cabaret Voltaire in the mid-1970's could not have harnessed it, without all that comfy digital software. They do try their best: many of these tracks are quite inventive, with lengthy stretches of attempted development as synthesized tones pulsate, grumble, burp, whine, explode, implode, chase each other and fade away on some of the ugliest frequencies you've ever heard (ʽIn Quest Of The Unusualʼ — indeed; ʽThe Outer Limitsʼ — two minutes of shrill ear-destruction and six more minutes of either a rusty metal fan twirling around or broken automatic doors closing and opening). But, as usual, there may be problems afoot when you start thinking of this as Art, and looking for those particular doors of perception that may or may not have been opened by your exposure to it.
At least on a purely objective basis this stuff seems innovative in the context of the time, when electronics were still largely used as a replacement for traditional instruments rather than a means to completely redefine our approach to music — something in which Cabaret Voltaire had a very active hand. But they didn't even hold on to this style for very long: much like Kraftwerk, whose least accessible records were their earliest ones, by the time they'd gotten a record deal they were already willing to compromise. And although I am not quite sure this made their music «better», I am at least grateful to them that they decided to make «dance-oriented» (sort of) tunes out of these factory puffs and huffs, instead of retaining their throbbing gristly integrity for the remain­der of their career.
RED MECCA (1981)
1) A Touch Of Evil; 2) Sly Doubt; 3) Landslide; 4) A Thousand Ways; 5) Red Mask; 6) Split Second; 7) Black Mask; 8) Spread The Virus; 9) A Touch Of Evil (reprise).
Prior to Red Mecca, the band had released an EP called Three Mantras — a musical representa­tion of their views on religious fundamentalism, Christian and Islamic, by means of a ʽWestern Mantraʼ and an ʽEastern Mantraʼ respectively (the liner notes jokingly apologized for the lack of the promised third mantra and explained that the record was underpriced to make up for that). However, even though each of the tracks ran for twenty minutes, they felt this wasn't nearly enough, and eventually followed it up with a longer, more «comprehensive» album, aptly called Red Mecca so they could offend everybody. Frickin' hatemongers.
This is often seen as one of the highest points in the band's career — probably because it is the first Cabaret Voltaire album which feels like a self-assured statement, rather than just another incoherent bunch of some-of-it-works-and-some-of-it-oh-me-oh-my experiments. It also feels better produced than before, even though they were using the same studio in Sheffield as always (maybe they got better insulation on the windows or fixed some of the wiring, I have no idea). Other than that, though, it's just another Cabaret Voltaire album, meaning that its sounds, at best, are interesting and curious rather than «grappling».
The record symbolically opens with an industrial/avantgarde reworking of Henry Mancini's opening theme for Orson Welles' Touch Of Evil — a movie that did not deal with religious issues as such, if I remember it correctly, but did dabble around in various sick corners of the human nature; and it is good to have that hint, because the band's drab, morose soundscapes aren't exactly reminiscent of «evil caused by mankind» on their own. If I knew nothing about the sour­ces of the recording, I would have regarded it... well, I still regard it as essentially the musical equivalent of taking a slow, uncomfortable, stuffy ride on some creaky underground train through a long row of caves, tunnels, grottoes, and mines populated by freaks, mutant dwarves, and methadone-addled incorporeal ghosts of Nazi criminals.
The «danceability» is faithfully preserved and even enhanced by a more musical than ever before use of brass instruments, but this still is no music to dance to: ten and a half minutes of ʽA Thou­sand Waysʼ ultimately sound more like an incessant, nerve-numbing «musical flagellation», with the percussive whips making as much damage to your body as the incomprehensible vocal exhor­tations do to your soul, than something to dance to (and besides, it's pretty hard to dance while being whipped). The bass groove of ʽSly Doubtʼ is as funky as anything, but when it is coupled with a synthesizer «lead melody» that resembles airplanes flying over your head, your sense of rhythm will be confused and shattered anyway. Same thing with the antithetical pairing of ʽRed Maskʼ and ʽBlack Maskʼ, except that guitars and keyboards on the former sound like malfunctio­ning electric drills, and on the latter like the soundtrack to an arcade space shooter.
Unfortunately, in one respect Red Mecca remains undistinguishable from any other Cabaret Voltaire release: it is hard to get seriously excited over any of these tracks, even if they sound cleaner, tighter, and imbued with sharper symbolical purpose. Memorable musical (or even «quasi-musical») themes are absent (the shrill, whining riff of ʽLandslideʼ is probably the closest they get, but even that one is nothing compared to what a Joy Division or a Cure could do with such an idea), «energy level» is not even a viable parameter, and there is almost no development — ʽA Thousand Waysʼ, after ten minutes (years) of that flagellation, leaves us exactly where it found us, and so do most of the shorter tracks as well.
This is why, in the end, I cannot permit myself to give out a thumbs up rating here: important as this album could be upon release, it does not seem to have properly stood the test of time. Even its symbolism has to be properly decoded with the aid of additional sources, and even if you do decode it, it is hardly a guarantee that from then on you'll be wanting to stick the CD under your pillow every night. It's interesting — but it's also boring. Which is a very basic characteristics of the band as a whole, of course, but since Red Mecca is often highlighted as «the place to start» with these guys, be warned: it's not too different from everything else they've done, and unless you've heard no experimental electronic music whatsoever post-1981, it's not highly likely to provoke a revelation. For historical reasons, though, it's worth getting to know.
2x45 (1982)
1) Breathe Deep; 2) Yashar; 3) Protection; 4) War Of Nerves (T.E.S.); 5) Wait And Shuffle; 6) Get Out Of My Face.
Actually, this, rather than Red Mecca, may be the band's most interesting contribution to the musical scene of the early Eighties. On this splice of two recording sessions, which was also the last CB album to feature Chris Watson as a member, the band shifts the balance over from the industrial / experimental shadings to the dance beats — this is a very club-oriented recording — without, however, toning down the overall gray weirdness of it all. The result is a return to their «shamanistic ritual» schtick, but in a more accessible and grappling way than ever before: six lengthy «art-dance» grooves which throw everything into the melting pot (funk, jazz, drone, Eastern influences, post-punk, industrial, you name it), and sort of get away with it.
Like Red Mecca, this here is the sound of a self-assured band that has, by and large, already found what it was looking for — and is now trying to prove to us that the search has not been in artistic vain. ʻBreathe Deepʼ has the skeleton of a modern electrofunk groove, but the shrill, dis­sonant wail of electronically treated guitars and wind instruments (not just saxes, but even a cla­rinet part!) is inherited from the band's avantgarde past and does a good job of creating an atmo­sphere of insane hustle-bustle: think Panic At The Factory or something like that. Totally dan­ceable, but sonically ugly and depressing, even if the band's traditional weaknesses still show through (namely, any of these tracks would have had much more impact if they tried building up these atmospheres rather than spilling everything out at once).
There is a substantial element of diversity, too: after ʻBreathe Deepʼ, ʻYasharʼ crosses the Cabaret Voltaire aesthetics with Near Eastern rhythmic and melodic elements, then ʻProtectionʼ goes into a happier sort of dance music where funk-pop guitar riffs are being offset by mad sax wailings, then ʻWar Of Nervesʼ slows things down to allow for some fairly poisonous avantgarde-guitar pyrotechnics, and eventually it all culminates in the 13-minute long ʻGet Out Of My Faceʼ, the loudest and most brash part of the ritual, sort of this band's equivalent of the Velvets' ʻSister Rayʼ, only with a larger pool of equipment and a little more compassion for people's ears. All of these tracks are united by a single aesthetic style, but they have different sub-atmospheres, and this helps make the record cooler, though, honestly, it is still hard to get truly wowed by the expe­rience. But at least with all these blaring saxes and guitar/synth interplay, you can't really argue that they are doing something that has since been rendered obsolete — 2x45 is a fairly unique mash-up of electronics, drone, and (not-so)-avantgarde jazz that is not afraid to cross genre bor­ders without properly belonging to any of them.
Honestly, I believe it's difficult not to be at least somewhat impressed by the results achieved here. As dance music, 2x45 can only be of interest nowadays for retro-futuristic, steampunkish parties; but I think it still has a bit of «mind-opening» potential, particularly in the way it mixes live in­struments with tape manipulation. And this is the first time, I believe, where I would actually grant a thumbs up rating to a Cabaret Voltaire album — not because I was emotionally and in­tellectually rewarded for making an effort, but rather because I didn't have to make too much of an effort to not be emotionally and intellectually rewarded, if you get my meaning here.
HAI! (1982)
1) Walls Of Kyoto; 2) 3 Days Monk; 3) Yashar (version); 4) Over & Over; 5) Diskono; 6) Taxi Music (version).
The strange fascination of Cabaret Voltaire with live albums is explainable in two ways: (a) much of their material was actually developed on the stage, and some of it even never left the stage (Hai! is a good illustration — three of its songs would only be released in studio versions after the album, and two more are only available on the album); (b) they actually believed that music properly «happens» as interaction between performer and audience, so that it's better to release a poor quality live album than a glossed-up studio tape. Well, sometimes, at least.
Stylistically, Hai! is very close to 2x45, but with one major difference: in place of Chris Watson, the band now features Alan Fish, trading in their «tape manipulator» for a real live drummer. The difference is impossible not to notice — particularly when you listen to the old and the new ʻYasharʼ back-to-back; the song now features fewer electronic effects, but a wild tribal beat all the way through. What is better? What is closer to the «true» Cabaret Voltaire spirit? Impossible to tell for me, since my connection to the band is not really on an emotional level; but at least for the sakes of a live show, I'd say the choice of a live drummer is a wise one.
All the other songs, too, feature expectable danceable grooves with dark-gray overtones, similar in mood, tempo, and tone; the only standout is ʻ3 Days Monkʼ, because of the wah-wah enhanced bassline — letting out an angry croak that is different from (and somehow feels a little more per­sonal and communicative than) all the regular dance grooves. I guess that ʻTaxi Musicʼ is also a standout due to its sheer length (although the studio recording would be even longer), but since it does not depart too much from its starting points, 11 minutes is just asking for trouble.
The bass groove can even be poppy if they wish: ʻWalls Of Kyotoʼ opens the album with a part that could be usable for every fast-moving song from Joy Division to U2, and maybe even well beyond that particular time span. But that does little to change things, as the guitars and key­boards still continue to churn out «sonic muck» more than anything else, and the only reason why Mallinder spits out those bits and pieces of broken vocals is to raise the aggression/paranoia bar. Nevertheless, the rhythm section is so tight throughout that your innate sense of rhythm might eventually placate your confused sense of melody. I do know at least this about myself — that every time ʻDiskonoʼ comes on, that simple, repetitive bassline gets me every time. In short, I give the record a thumbs up — not on an emotional level, but on some sort of primal level it has that old shamanistic charm, only this time the shamans exercise a bit more self-discipline.