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Album Review
by SashaS
24-12-2001
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More on: Cabaret Voltaire
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| Cabaret Voltaire |
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Cabaret Voltaire: 'Original Sound Of Sheffield ’83 / ’87. Best Of;'
(Virgin)
CV: synth-alt-rock-pop-punk-funk-industrial-dance-experimental-electro pioneers
To be honest with you – which is ill-advised in the music biz – my initial delight with a Cabaret Voltaire compilation was somewhat dampened upon realising it covers only their ‘middle-years’. The electro pioneers’ ‘Original Sound Of Sheffield ’83 / ’87. Best Of;’ doesn’t cover the period of their (and reviewer’s preferred) seminal best, from the end of the 1970s and early 1980s. No ‘Nag Nag Nag’, ‘Here She Comes Now’ (Velvet Underground’s cover) is missing, as well as ‘Premonition’ and ‘This Is Entertainment’… Well, there must have been a memory overload…
Cabaret Voltaire, named after the experimental Parisian Dadaist performances of the pre-1920s although influenced by Can and Brian Eno, were formed in Sheffield in 1973 by Stephen Mallinder and Richard H. Kirk (with Chris Watson until 1982) and needed five years for their debut song to meet record player’s stylus. ‘Baader Meinhof’ was included on ‘A Factory Sampler’ double-EP that led to a contract with Rough Trade (the leading independent label of its day). CV’s debut album ‘Mix-Up’ (1979) marked new territory so well it was a challenging listen all the way through.
The band’s continued to make music during the 1990s but never as precious as the early days and inferior to the period this compilation covers. ‘Just Fascination’ is a pop song Human League would have killed for, ‘Crackdown’ combines pop, strange noises and funky rhythm that can’t be described any other way but – ‘punk-funk’. ‘Sensoria’ is a club classic, ‘James Brown’ is mighty funk-workout, ‘Kino’ is cyber-alt-rocker-cum-funker, ‘Thank You America’ manages to sound ironic and respectful, at the same time. CV remain the uncrowned and unacclaimed originators of British electronic experimental dance music.
‘Original Sound Of Sheffield ’83 / ’87. Best Of;’ is full of sounds that spaghetti-junction Kraut-rock influences with groove elements, indust-real noises and embracing the emerging 12-inch mixes where repetition bends your brainwave pattern. And yet, this was still underground and the band’s modest hits wouldn’t occur until 1987 with ‘Don’t Argue’ (included here), which peaked at 69. Or, if you are interested in delving deeper, a month ago a 3-CD set was released, ‘Conform To Deform ’82 / ’90, Archive;’ that contains a whole disc of live recordings from Edinburgh, June 1990: the Cab’s live shows were once described as “beautifully horrific”.
This is how the future sounded like once upon a time. If you are looking for an out-of-mainstream-yet-enlightening CD, and it is the only one issued today that is worth a mention, then grab this as a document to where zeitgeist was forged. As I said, I had doubts about this period but – glad I could ‘re-save’ my revised recollection.
8/10
SashaS
5-4-2002
Cabaret Voltaire’s ‘Original Sound Of Sheffield ’83 / ’87. Best Of;’ is released 24 December 2001 on Virgin
CV’s ‘Conform To Deform ’82 / ’90, Archive;’ 3-CD box-set is also available on Virgin
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