Tori Amos_Pretty good year

Tori Amos-Winter

Kraftwerk-Aerodnamic

Eagles-Witchy Woman

Gimlour and the orb

Such heavy rotation on my computer and hifi at the moment, love the dance feel combined with Gilmours guitar work. Youth is playing a big part in the production. Absolutely brilliant record.

Killing Joke-European Super state.

from their last album

Cabaret Voltaire-the Legacy

With all the recent thing in the press about 80s music and the resurgence of bands from that era, there is always one band that gets overlooked in my opinion and that is Cabaret Voltaire. To Be honest my knowledge of the cabs only starts on from about 1984 with the Microphonies album, however they had a recording career that went as far back as 78 and they existed in various forms from 1973 onwards.
Cabaret Voltaire were Stephen Mallinder(bass and vocals) and Richgard H Kirk(synths)and Chris Watson. Chris Watson left in 1981 and went onto form the Halfer Trio. For me Cabaret Voltaire were a revelation in the 80s and 90s. In the 80s there was a massive thing in the press that with the punk revolution and particularly in the mainstream music press there was very little being mentioned about music from before the late 70s, the only band at that time that I remember being reviewed favourably was the velvet underground. Bands like Pink Floyd and even Roxy Music were sort of seen as dinosaurs in music terms even though there music had been truly groundbreaking only 10 years earlier.

Cabaret Voltaire's early records had a feature of distorted vocalks often treated through things like a vecoder which almost synthisised the voice. The very early records were almost like stripped down funk. At the time the indie scene was like cottage industry with labels popping up everywhere and music being accepted on to various labels like Rough Trade and 4AD. Cabaret Voltaire toured with Joy division and were briefly assoicated with factory records, With the loss of Chris Watson they still recorded in a similar style but it was with the 1983 release the crackdown that they embraced the new technology and samplers that were availble at that time. What makes Cabaret Voltaire's music so brilliant of that time was they were using their cut up techniques and old sounds and merging them with hard hitting synth and drumbeats.



They released some other brilliant records like 'the covenenat ' album in 1985, in 85 and 86 the released 12" eps like The Draintrain and Drinking Gasoline. One thing of note worth adding is that where as the mid 80s album 'Mircophonies ' had a bit of record company muscle behind it at that time, Virgin If I recall. However by 1986 they released records indiependantly. Drinking Gasoline which came out in 1985 was a brilliant record and I have to admit the first record I brought by them, what was appealing at the time was that it was a 12" record(double) which was quite rare, it was also cheap to buy.

By 1987 They had managed to get signed to EMI and released a good album in Code, but after another album after that they were back to releasing albums on indie labels again. The sound of the last few albums incorparates the sounds of the dance music at times, but the drum sound had gone slightly lighter as opposed to the harsh drum sounds of the 1984-1987 era.



Cabaret Voltaire Split in 1994 . Which was probably the right thing to do, all though they had influenced many artists theyt had gone from experimental to dance to techno , from self financing record labels to indie labels to two major labels.

I see on a art site Stephen Mallinder is contruting articles and remixes of Cabaret Voltaire tracks from 2009 and Richard H Kirk is still releasing solo albums under various alias's.

Although I still like the occasional techno track, remembering Cabaret Voltaire and what they released of the time renders everything that followed after as slightly redundant.