Introduction

JOHNNY YESNO (1983)
1) Taxi Music; 2) Hallucination Sequence; 3) D.T.'s/Cold Turkey; 4) The Quarry; 5) Title Sequence; 6) Taxi Music Dub.
An interesting diversion — supposedly these tracks constitute a soundtrack to a short movie by Peter Care, one of two little-known quickies he made before establishing an alternate career in the music video business (mostly for R.E.M., but remember, uh, Bananarama's ʻVenusʼ? Apparently that's him, too...). The album itself is probably longer than the movie, though, and functions as a completely autonomous Cabaret Voltaire release, significantly different in style from their usual stuff. It is also the last proper CV album with Chris Watson (who had already quit the band when the record was released, but apparently worked on all the tracks).
I have no idea what the movie was about, or whether this shift in style was caused by the movie or something else, but fact is, Johnny YesNo is a little softer, a little more mysterious, and much better produced than the average Watson-era CV album. Unlike the usual releases, which largely focused on bass/guitar interplay, here the keyboards take a much more prominent position, and the bass grooves are largely absent or reduced to just one or two pouncing notes, like on ʻTaxi Musicʼ — you can dance to it if you want to, but you'll probably end up looking stupid. Kirk's guitar sound remains grumbly and murky as usual, but because of the incessant chirping of the keyboards (main riff is poppy, «lead» melodies are free-form jazzy), the atmosphere is not as de­pressing as could be expected. Indeed, one could picture oneself taking a slow taxi ride through some desolate cityscape, populated with cyborgs and mutants going around their business. Inof­fensive, but entertaining. Entertaining, but overlong — a fourteen-minute taxi ride like that can really wear you down after a while, especially considering that the landscape stays more or less the same throughout.
The shorter tracks are even stronger bent on atmosphere rather than rhythm: ʻHallucination Sequenceʼ places its faith in sonic oscillations that put your mind in some creepy alchemist lab; ʻCold Turkeyʼ is a bunch of gruesome guitar feedback that tries to reproduce the feeling as au­thentically as John Lennon's song of the same name (ugly, but for a reason); ʻThe Quarryʼ is the usual hustle-and-bustle set to the metronomic punch of some mighty earth-burrowing machine; and ʻTitle Sequenceʼ is basically a wild electronic Jew's harp tap-dancing on your spinal cord. No amazing sonic discoveries here, I'd think, but some pretty creative ideas, and even despite the paucity of the tracks, the diversity of these atmospheres could easily compete with the diversity of any regular CV release.
Final verdict — this does belong in the proper discography; it's not merely an auxiliary detour, but quite a serious, autonomous project, not to mention one of the best produced Cabaret Voltaire albums of the early Eighties. But it will hardly be remembered as a milestone in the history of electronics, industrial music, or movie soundtracks.
THE CRACKDOWN (1983)
1) 24-24; 2) In The Shadows; 3) Talking Time; 4) Animation; 5) Over And Over; 6) Just Fascination; 7) Why Kill Time (When You Can Kill Yourself); 8) Haiti; 9) Crackdown.
Oh, looks like someone's tired of being unjustly confused with a guitar band. Taking their mission one step further, Cabaret Voltaire now place severe restrictions on guitar-based melodies, and plunge into the seductive waters of electronica. The Crackdown is far less noisy than their pre­vious releases — still dark gray, still a disturbing weight on your conscious, but «cleaner» and more polished than it used to be. More sterile, too, you could say.
The opening track, ʻ24-24ʼ, sounds like something Prince could have come up with — the same electrofunky type of rhythm, same drum machine sound, same approach to the mechanics of the groove to get you up and dancin' in that early Eighties style. Except Prince would have made the number all pretty and optimistic, whereas in the hands of Cabaret Voltaire all such grooves be­come zombie rituals, so we have unsettling lyrics ("turning out, beggars to eat me"), hushed creepy voices, keyboards that sound like marinated church organs, and an atmosphere of total coldness and detachment. These here are the roots of IDM — because if this ain't «intelligent dance music», then what is? (Then again, so was Kraftwerk, so the term is really useless).
Most of what follows is the same: groove after groove, constructed out of dark electronic tex­tures, sometimes peppered with extra ingredients (the brass section on ʻTaking Timeʼ), but always set­ting the same mood. Actually, mood-wise this new style may be said to work better than the old one: Mallinder's out-of-the-shadow vocals are now higher and cleaner in the mix, and throughout the entire album there's a sense of some magic eye, benevolent or malicious, watching over your shoulder, as you make the journey through the twisted alleys of evil electrofunk. Melody-wise or hook-wise, though, I am not even sure where to begin in an attempt to single out any highlights or simply to talk about the points and effects of any particular track.
The closest thing to a potential «hit» on the record is probably ʻJust Fascinationʼ — as Mallinder moves one step closer to singing than hissing and hushing, the track begins to sound uncannily like classic Depeche Mode, and suddenly, Cabaret Voltaire get access to associations of deep dark sexuality that they never really had before. Bad news, though — they don't know very well how to exploit that, nor do they seem to really want to, so essentially the effort is wasted: not too many horny teenagers would probably make use of The Crackdown in 1983, as compared to Construction Time Again. Then again, Cabaret Voltaire would never stoop to becoming a real pop band, would it? To ensure that nothing of the sort ever happens, they name one of the tracks ʻWhy Kill Time When You Can Kill Yourselfʼ, setting themselves up for lawsuits of suicide pro­paganda — except, since this record never sold that much, nobody bothered.
Actually, speaking of selling, the album did reach No. 31 on the UK charts — their highest posi­tion ever, signifying that the change in style did appeal to the masses to a certain degree. They would quickly rectify this mistake with the follow-up, but whether they were rooting for the money or not, the decision to make a dash for the trendy dance scene of 1983 was clearly con­scious, and at least it did not result in them making yet another carbon copy of Red Mecca — even if I cannot say that the new results were any more exciting.
Note also that most of the recent CD editions come with an attached bonus EP, called Double­vision — featuring a studio version of ʻDiskonoʼ and three other tracks that, in stark contrast to this album, are more of a noise-ambient nature (including one called ʻMoscowʼ, with resonating church bells as a distinctive feature — other than that, it seems to represent a post-nuclear war Moscow, which, come to think of it, would be quite an appropriate evil fantasy for 1983). Again, nothing too special, but curious to have as such an ardent counterpoint to the cold dance rhythms of The Crackdown proper.
MICRO-PHONIES (1984)
1) Do Right; 2) The Operative; 3) Digital Rasta; 4) Spies In The Wires; 5) Theme From Earthshaker; 6) James Brown; 7) Slammer; 8) Blue Heat; 9) Sensoria.
If you have not had the chance to grow up with the Three Stooges (and how could I, a simple Soviet kid, ever have had such a chance?), you might find it hard to get adjusted to their crude brand of humor later on in life. Consequently, even if Micro-Phonies, their 87th short produced in 1945 with an already ailing Curly, tends to be highly rated by veteran fans, nothing guarantees that it will be equally warmly embraced by a new gen...
...oh, hang on, we're actually talking Cabaret Voltaire here, not the Stooges. So anyway, if you have not had the chance to grow up with Cabaret Voltaire (and although I, a simple Soviet kid, might have had that chance if my parents were huge New Wave fans, they were not, so I hadn't), you might find it hard to get adjusted to their rough brand of electrofunk later on in life. Con­sequently, even if Micro-Phonies, their 6th proper LP produced in 1984 with three new percus­sionists replacing Alan Fish, tends to be highly rated by veteran fans, particularly those reared on the video for ʻSensoriaʼ, nothing guarantees that it will be equally warmly embraced by those of us who tend to be curious about Cabaret Voltaire rather than giddily excited.
But yes, ʻSensoriaʼ is a pretty damn good «spooky dance-pop» number for 1984, maybe one of the most successful updates of Kraftwerk's Man Machine vibe for the Age of Dance. Mystery bassline, disturbing synth bubbling, and Mallinder's breathy vocals singing about sin, temptation, and "senses reaching fever pitch". Frankly, this is not a very good line: Cabaret Voltaire are a cold band par excellence, and no matter how many paranoid overdubs they make, "fever pitch" is never a thing I could associate with any of their songs. Across these six minutes, something is clearly being reached by the senses, but it ain't fever pitch. I'm still trying to figure it out.
One of the tracks carries the name of ʻJames Brownʼ, as if to acknowledge the debt that these guys owe to their funky forefathers, but yet again, James Brown makes hot music, whereas this song, like everything else in the catalog, is freezing cold, so we should all agree to retitle it ʻAnti-James Brownʼ and then play it simultaneously with ʻSex Machineʼ so as to annihilate all sonic matter in the world. It does feature the catchiest bit on the album — the mantra of "everything devoured, I learn to hold my will power" repeated over and over against a cheerful brass riff — but I have no idea what it means or how it relates to The Godfather Of Soul.
However, my personal favourite track on the record is ʻSpies In The Wiresʼ, maybe one of the most atmospheric things in the CV catalog ­— and I mean successfully atmospheric, on a true sensual level rather than on the level of intellectual analysis. Subjective opinion, yes, but some­how it all clicks together, particularly the cavernous synth overdubs and the "like spies in the wire, dark eyes in the wire" chorus. This track, I think, could actually spook away impressionable little kids, so keep that in mind. Other people have their own favorites, like the faster-paced ʻOpera­tiveʼ or the perverted vibe of ʻBlue Heatʼ, but in the end it does not matter, because all the songs end up using the exact same vibe — now completely updated and refined for the general dance environment, without sacrificing an ounce of the band's ideology. Even the aptly titled ʻDigital Rastaʼ, which, as you can guess, is an attempt to synthesize their standard sound with elements of reggae, still ends up sounding like the soundtrack to a movie about chasing innocent bystanders in dark corridors and sucking their souls out. (But don't worry, the chase is always better than the catch for Mallinder and Co.).
I have no idea if this is «better» than The Crackdown, but at the very least, Micro-Phonies is not any less inspired — which does not imply that either of the two is a work of genius, but yes, at least as late as 1984, Cabaret Voltaire continued to be on some sort of cutting edge. And the album title might suggest that they weren't taking themselves too seriously, either, which is al­ways a good thing.
THE COVENANT, THE SWORD AND THE ARM OF THE LORD (1985)
1) L21ST; 2) I Want You; 3) Hells Home; 4) Kickback; 5) The Arm Of The Lord; 6) Warm; 7) Golden Halos; 8) Motion Rotation; 9) Whip Blow; 10) The Web.
And here comes another partial reinvention of the Cabaret Voltaire sound / aesthetics. First they were a theatrically spooky avantgarde outfit, then they became a theatrically spooky dance-pop band, and with The Covenant, they become a hilariously surrealistic dance-pop band. Never mind that the title of the album is taken from the name of a recently demolished white supre­macist organisation (which is why in the US the record had to be renamed simply The Arm Of The Lord to pass censorpship), or that some of the songs are spiked with excerpts from Charlie Manson's speeches — there are even fewer shivery / creepy moments here than on previous CV albums, and a lot of instrumental color instead.
Personally, I find it totally non-coincidental that the record was released approximately one year after Art Of Noise made a big impact with Who's Afraid Of The Art Of Noise?, because a lot of what's going on here sounds as if Trevor Horn and Anne Dudley were involved with the pro­ject (apparently, they were not, but I would totally not be surprised). Bubbly synth bass, as if belonging to kiddie show themes; blasts of synthesized brass instruments, as if coming from sen­sationalist B-movie soundtracks; spliced, sliced, and mashed vocal overdubs jumping out like jack-in-a-boxes at predictable or unpredictable moments; paranoid percussion — sometimes all of it within the confines of the same track.
Of course, Cabaret Voltaire still retain too much darkness to sound like newly emerged clones of the Art of Noise — Mallinder's vocals, in particular, have not changed much, as he still consis­tently sounds like a shadow on the run, out of breath but not out of a burning desire to save his life and his sanity despite overwhelming odds. However, there's something controversial in these paranoid vocals now surrounded by bubble synths and occasional stuttery oi-oi-oi vocal overdubs that belong in a post-Monty Python world rather than in the dusty underground of the original Cabaret Voltaire. If you know what I mean.
Unquestionably, they reach the end of that rope with ʻWarmʼ, a track heavily loaded with sexy female moans that you will have problems playing in public — one thing Cabaret Voltaire had never been up to this moment is aggressively erotic, and for a good reason: it is hard to concen­trate on erotic thoughts when you are running for your life in dark underground corridors. If the track were at least musically interesting, it might have worked, but its interlocking synth patterns don't sound any different from the average boring synth pop melodies of the time — which, in turn, makes the aahs and oohs seem even more ridiculous. And yet, sexual themes now occupy the band more than ever before: ʻI Want Youʼ, regardless of its title, is said to be about mastur­bation, for instance (not that any sane person could masturbate at that tempo for an entire four minutes, but who knows? Mallinder and Kirk may have had plenty of experience).
As usual, individual tracks are rather non-descript here: the «Art of Noise aesthetics» is adopted throughout, meaning that no two songs are completely different, and the album as a whole is... well, I am not sure the merger truly works. In their attempt to combine sarcastic darkness with playful absurdism, they sort of downplay the former without justifying the latter — think the same dusty dark corridors as usual, but now they're lighted with bright shiny Christmas orna­ments. Why? Well, it just so happens that there's a heavy demand for bright shiny Christmas or­naments these days — it's Christmas season, you see, and you gotta give the people what they want, even if they don't have any intentions to celebrate Christmas at all. I wouldn't go as low as a thumbs down, because this is not a proper «sellout» or anything, but I really don't see much of a point in this album. And it certainly is not made any scarier just by the inclusion of some Charles Manson mumble — most people won't even know it's Manson, and those who will are not going to lose much sleep over it.
CODE (1987)
1) Don't Argue; 2) Sex, Money, Freaks; 3) Thank You America; 4) Here To Go; 5) Trouble (Won't Stop); 6) White Car; 7) No One Here; 8) Life Slips By; 9) Code.
This, I believe, is where it makes all kinds of sense to jump ship. If The Covenant made at least superficial efforts to preserve Cabaret Voltaire's psycho atmosphere, Code just drops it all in favor of a completely redesigned, rebranded, glossed-up sound that makes Cabaret Voltaire no different from dozens, if not hundreds, of artists in the electro-pop genre. Their reliance on «Art Of Noise aesthetics» continues unabated, but there are no signs of a newly found sense of humor, and there is nothing offered to truly delight the senses.
Track after track, everything on Code sounds the same: thick synthetic bass, electronic percus­sion, ornamental synthesizers, and Mallinder's "peril's-always-round-the-corner" vocals that we would love to hear resolve themselves in a mighty scream at least once — suspense is fine, but not when it lasts forever; eventually, it ceases to be suspense and becomes routine. If Mallinder and Kirk were masters of the pop hook, things could be brighter; they are not, though, and neither do they qualify as masters of the electronic groove.
It does not really get any better or any worse than the first track. Like the Manson-soaked tracks on Covenant, ʻDon't Argueʼ tries to brew up a feeling of danger and paranoia by sampling dia­log from Your Job In Germany, Frank Capra's «training» movie for GIs who occupied Germany in 1945, with stern "you will not be friendly... you will be aloof..." warnings scattered all over the track. Problem is, the remaining parts of the track are simply too emotionally weak to be com­patible with Capra's genuinely serious overdubs. What are they trying to scare us with — the bubbly bass? The thin, wimpy, string synths? The hushed multi-tracked vocal melody? Yes, it is objectively «paranoid-sounding», but for all these much-clichéd tricks, you can clearly feel that the major focus is on the danceable rhythm, not the atmosphere that goes with it. In fact, remove the film overdubs and it's like... third prize in the local «create-your-own-Prince-groove» high school competition or something. Useless, really.
And with that heavy feeling, you discover the second track (ʻSex, Money, Freaksʼ) and you find out that its vibe is pretty much the same. All the ingredients are the same — and the final effect is the same: danceable, for sure, but artistically bland. Third, fourth, fifth track... all the same, all the way to the end. Honestly, I have not the faintest idea why anybody should have listened to this back in 1987, let alone now. Thumbs down, and let's be done with it, because other than a bunch of expletives, I cannot think of anything else in the constructive vein.
GROOVY, LAIDBACK AND NASTY (1990)
1) Searchin'; 2) Hypnotised; 3) Minute By Minute; 4) Runaway; 5) Keep On (I Got This Feeling); 6) Magic; 7) Time Beats; 8) Easy Life; 9) Rescue Me (City Lights).
I must say that I am a tiny bit fascinated with how Cabaret Voltaire's transformation took place so slowly, meticulously, and at such a smooth rate — from The Covenant, with its emotionally neutral substance set to Charles Manson spookiness, to Code, with its purely formal darkness over unassuming dance rhythms, and finally to this record, which completely discards all traces of the band's seedy past and, in fact, in select places sounds like Phil Collins.
Okay, so actually some sources suggest that the album may have been influenced by the acid house genre. Me not having had much interest towards trendy electronic developments in the late Eighties (I was kind of more into Creedence Clearwater Revival at the time), I'm still not entirely sure what «acid house» is, but if it's, let's say, 808 State, then this album is definitely not even close to «acid house», because the only thing «acid» about it is how it eats away my ears with its bland, stupid-sounding rhythms. As far as I can tell now, twenty-five years after the fact, this is just run-of-the-mill dance music, without any serious hooks (which is normal for CV) and with­out any captivating atmospheric twists (which is not normal).
The opening number, ʻSearchin'ʼ, is fairly typical of the record as a whole: house rhythms, simple repetitive piano notes, disco strings, and unexpectedly high-pitched, sentimental vocals from Mr. Mallinder — it's nice to finally see him introduce some diversity into his singing, but not at such a terrible cost, because this here is not true Cabaret Voltaire, nor is it any other sort of decent music. Track after track, you get bales of club fodder whose only purpose (get you dancing to those hot new rhythms) outlived itself a long time ago. A little bit of rapping (ʻRunawayʼ) does neither harm nor good, but for the most part the tracks are remarkably monotonous.
I am pretty sure that only a major, major fan of generic late Eighties' dance muzak could still hold some love in his/her heart for this stuff. It is not even clear to me if this was an intentional sellout or more of an «experiment» — possibly the latter, considering that already the next album would bring back a little of that true CV essence. Regardless of whether they did this for money pur­poses or out of a crazy ar­tistic whim, Groovy, Laidback & Nasty is very clearly the nadir of the band's career. Even the album title is like a self-parody. It's a good thing nobody was interested, though, or we might have ended up with a whole series of such turds. Thumbs down.
BODY AND SOUL (1991)
1) No Resistance; 2) Shout; 3) Happy; 4) Decay; 5) Bad Chemistry; 6) Vibration; 7) What Is Real; 8) Western Land; 9) Don't Walk Away; 10) Alien Nation Funk; 11) What Is Real.
A correction of sorts: this next installation of The Continuing Saga of Mallinder And Kirk's Journeys In Confusing Electronic Worlds of the Next Generation brings back the spookiness of classic Cabaret Voltaire, if not the rest of the atmosphere. This does not mean that we have to like the album or even waste more than a tiny modicum of time on it, but at least you will not emerge from the listening experience feeling deceived, stunned, and stupid.
This album, unlike its predecessor, probably could be qualified as true «acid» house, since many of the tracks have true psychedelic vibes, mostly generated through creaky, squelchy synth tones and their interaction with the overloud bass lines. Whether it should be qualified as respectable or awesome acid house is a different matter — to me, it still sounds like they are essentially trying to emulate their new teachers, with consistently mediocre results. Any 808 State release from that period, such as Ex:El from that same year, kicks Mallinder and Kirk's ass all over the place in terms of energy and excitement, because these guys have learned the basic trade, but they can only establish the groove: they lack the imagination required to properly ride it.
Of course, this is how they always did it: even in their best period, any five-or-more-minute composition of theirs would sound the same throughout. But now that they no longer sound like a bunch of living ghosts wandering through bombed sewers, and now that the gray, depressing, but at least somewhat exploratory guitar drones have been completely replaced by repetitive synth loops, the atmospheres become thinner, feebler, and far more prone to boring you to death on the very first minute (although at least they are not embarrassing you the way they did on Laidback, Groovy & Nasty). Occasionally they pin the track to a very sharply defined, catchy keyboard riff and some repetitive vocal mantra (ʻDon't Walk Awayʼ), slapping «commercial potential» on the song, but then I am not quite sure of the emotional content of the hook. It's still far more «body» than «soul», you understand.
I am a little partial towards the first track, ʻNo Resistanceʼ, which seems to betray more work and inspiration than almost anything else here — a nice combo of overdubs, with paranoid bubbly synth bass, Latinized percussion, «magic room keyboards», Mallinder's disturbed whispers, and occasional avantgarde piano breaks almost succeeding in restoring the classic old paranoia by entirely new means. However, everything that follows feels either inferior in execution or follo­wing some entirely different (and boring) purpose other than letting you know how confused and scared of the ways of the world these guys are (which is, after all, their only legitimate reason for musical existence). Nice bass on ʻShoutʼ, ʻHappyʼ, and other tracks, but no instrumental hooks, and the endlessly repeated vocal mantras get annoying real quickly.
Every once in a while, they interrupt the never-ending paranoid-dance party with either a message of atmospheric astral noise (ʻDecayʼ) or a piece of blissful ambience (ʻWestern Landʼ, which sounds as if Eno were hiding around the corner), but those interludes are really only there to give you a break from toe-tappin', foot-stompin' obligations; the last time Cabaret Voltaire were syste­matically engaged in the production of noise was even before the release of their first LP, and the last time they were systematically interested in beautiful-sounding ambience was... never, so the probability of their making a mark on the genres here is about the same as if Paul McCartney, way past his prime, suddenly decided to tread on the turf of death metal (which would at least be far more novel).
As it is, by the time we get to ʻWhat Is Realʼ, terminating the experience with seven minutes of a continuously looped six-note keyboard riff eating your brains out, all you have learned is that switching to «proper» acid house did not automatically transform Mallinder and Kirk into song­writing geniuses. However, for objectivity's sake I do have to add that I am no expert on house music, much less acid house music, and occasionally find even alleged masterpieces dull and pointless, so be independent, try ʻNo Resistanceʼ for starters and feel free to allow yourself to get all wowed and awed by the rest — perhaps I just «don't get it», classic style.