Cabaret Voltaire : Classic Or Dud/Search and Destroy

Also - I've got a "Drinking Gasoline" CD EP. Is that what you're looking for?

yes. have never seen the cd version in all my years of searching.
bravo.

forgot how great 'the covenant ... ' sounds.
on headphones for the first time in 20+ years and its an absolute revelation.
the CV weirdness but in widescreen production.

man I need to find a copy of that

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god i love this band

― latebloomer, Monday, 25 February 2008 01:49 (1 year ago)

I miss having Bimble around to wax enthusiastic on threads like these.

I miss having Bimble around to wax enthusiastic on threads like these.

^^^^ * 100

dug out the drain train ep from the archive.
wasn't this the final release of the electro-funk era before they became more electronic/house?
being the awkward buggers they are they decided to make one side 45rpm, the other 33rpm.

Yeah, "Drain Train" was my jumping off point. I listened to it the other day and was underwhelmed. Frankly, "Code" itself is ok but not as otherworldly as "Sword, Covenant..." which for me was their peak. I've grown to love their early works as well but I'll always have a soft spot for the push-pull embracing of "accessibility" in their Virgin years.

does anyone know where the sampled dialog used on "Gut Level" originates? Sounds like a 70s urban/drug/police movie or possibly documentary (which the Cabs were so fond of)

Just listened to a bit of "Groovy, Laidback and Nasty" on Spotify - I'd never heard it before. My instincts were correct, truly awful. Well, awful in so much as that sort of thing is decidedly NOT what I want from CV!

They - or rather Richard H Kirk and Paul Smith - are reissuing all the Virgin albums through Mute.

Woohoo! Their Virgin years are my favorite period and ripe for rediscovery, it should find a new audience in the 21st century. Great disco-not-disco post-punk infused electronica.

Yeah, they sound very 'now' to me. Thank You America, Crackdown, Sensoria, Yashar (John Robie), James Brown...

I have seriously been hoping for this for a decade now - considering the compilations of material from the Virgin years a short while back, I'm actually surprised that it took this long! I hope they somehow manage to get a reissue for Code, too. The other Manhattan/EMI album, don't care.

easily my fave era of the band but this is weird as the virgin era stuff has been pretty easy to pick up on cd ever since they were released.
that aside, if it helps the guys get some long deserved TLC then i aint complaining.
wonder if drinking gasoline will be released as a seperate release or as a bunch of extra trax spread across the releases ..

I interviewed Richard H Kirk and Peter Care about Johnny YesNo Redux recently.

not Cabaret Voltaire w/o both Mallinder and Watson imo

still cabaret voltaire without watson but definitely not without mallinder.

If you like.

exactly how is a Cabs record without Mal going to be any different from a RHK solo record...

.....apart from the massive press a new Cabs record will get...

not that there's been anything announced...

not Cabaret Voltaire w/o both Mallinder and Watson imo

I love "Kino" so much tho

there's good post-Watson stuff it's just that the CV I get most excited about is the one where there's a guy whose job is "tapes and samples" - you've heard Chris Watson's nature recordings, right? I know, that sounds dull, but they are awesome. Like, actually-listen-to-this-repeatedly awesome, not "oh how interesting" awesome. Outside the Circle of Fire is the one I know best but he's done a bunch of stuff: http://www.chriswatson.net/

lol you are responding to someone who had his life changed by Since The Accident and City Slab Horror, I'm not at all averse to tape loop stuff

I will admit tho that I was always more into glossy dancefloor Cabs than anything else, largely due to what I could find in record stores.

yes, very familiar with chris watson's wondrous recordings and i love cv mk 1 but mk 2 post watson were truly great too.

I can't lie: I love the Watson field recording stuff...but I still think CV post-Watson is still perfectly fine, though obviously a different beast than the early stuff. But CV without Mal isn't CV.

Yeah. I'm aware of Chris Watson. I've interviewed him in fact. Bands often go through different phases in one career. It's not a difficult concept to get your head around. I'm aware that people have a lot of emotion tied up with 1970s and 1980s Cabaret Voltaire. I'm one of them. But simply writing off Cabs off because they're not sat in a squat doing tape loop experiments is madness.

I write off anyone who is not sat in a squat doing tape loop experiments tbh

What about Scritti?

I genuinely think more bands should be sat in squats doing tape loop experiments. Mumford and Sons for example.

Yeah. I'm aware of Chris Watson. I've interviewed him in fact. Bands often go through different phases in one career. It's not a difficult concept to get your head around. I'm aware that people have a lot of emotion tied up with 1970s and 1980s Cabaret Voltaire. I'm one of them. But simply writing off Cabs off because they're not sat in a squat doing tape loop experiments is madness.

I think I've told this story here before but there's a can't-get-past-the-moment thing w/me & the Cabs - at the time of 2x45 & Eddie's Out/Fools Game they were my favorite band - more specifically, my friend Tom & I were constantly spinning CV, writing their interlocking logo on whatever surfaces we could find, having doubtless insufferable discussions about them all the time. I'd found the Mallinder solo stuff, listened to it once & then had it stolen; we'd pieced together what we could about them, there wasn't much info to get. And then suddenly The Crackdown. I can dig it now but at the time it was just the gravest most horrible disappointment - what the fuck is up with these whispery vocals with, horrors, audible lyrics? So yeah. It's really much younger underrated a. who reps for the 3-member Cabaret Voltaire, but I have much fealty to young underrated a., because he will go ham if time slips and he shows up and finds me not toeing a very purist line.

tell young time traveling aero to stfu and watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4IAnSdtbNY

and like, when I first bought the Fools Game 12", there was some older dude, I have no idea whose friend he was or how we ended up at his house, he was probably putting the make on us idk I was 14, but he had what is still probably the best home stereo I've ever been in the presence of. (he also had a floatation tank in his house. RIP post-70s California single-dude apartments) I'd bought the 12" but none of us had heard it, we were stoked, and then there we are at this dude's house and Tom, who's like this great combo of impeccable manners and just-every-so-often-but-then-really horrible ones, says - in his most polite way - "Can we listen to the record aero bought?" and we put the shit on and it was like....holy fuck this sounds amazing. And it was so long, it was like it went on forever, and the pitched movie dialogue on Gut Level was just so terrifying. And the leftover sax stuff from that sort of smash-jazz era of "out" English stuff...the bleakness of it.

In other news this is really interesting and I had never heard of it:

or all the viewers not from italy:

this was the usual thing in early 80s in italy, all kinds of exotic music with a beat

were slowed or speeded up until they reached 95-100 beats per minute.

I remember the same treatment to the instrumental version of "don't you want me".

A very atmospheric and slow track , "Eyes of a stranger" by Payolas, was speeded up to reach that bpm so the voice track was a nearly comic result of a 2year od child singin' in falsetto. I was dj too but didn like that thng

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ep8mvWy3QNE

No mention of 'Voice of America', the Cabs first LP? Excellent early industrial stuff. Also glad to se Moley repping for 'Code'. Cheesy but very listenable. Better than SPK they went dance.

yeah ultimately dance CV > dance SPK, but man do I love "Breathless"

But Slogun > Nag Nag Nag

Having said that though…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgENIfKAP7A&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Fair play. I'd like to listen to all of the Attic Tapes box set in a flotation tank.

When I went to listen to Chris Watson's massive installation in the Victorian palm house at Kew Gardens last year, it was so impressive I ended up staying there all day to listen to it as many times as I could. It's quite a famous greenhouse and I think it features in the 'Caterpillar' video by The Cure. He recorded 15 minutes at sunset and 15 minutes at sunrise of sound in a section of tropical rainforest.

If I understood the concept correctly he used 80 microphones to record the sound and then played it back through 80 speakers which were placed all around the palm house on every level, meaning you could walk through the field recording as it were. For example if you were walking along the gantries at the top of the Palm House you'd hear more bird noise than you would below where there would be more insect noise.

And on the last playback of the day I saw Watson sat under a palm and I was going to go over and say hello but he was with a clearly delighted lady companion so I just threw the horns at him instead. Discretely of course.

No mention of 'Voice of America', the Cabs first LP?

No! Mix-up is the first LP.

btw my single trip to Kew Gardens was a wonderful day for me, a Watson sound installation in the palm house sounds just sublime.

never heard fools game before.

love it.

as this is the era of CV i love, i really regret not getting the conform to deform boxset now.

No mention of 'Voice of America', the Cabs first LP?

No! Mix-up is the first LP.

And "Voice of America" is actually their 3rd LP! Arguably their 4th if "Three Mantras" is considered an album.

I consider "Three Mantras" an EP. A really long one, in the style of the day! But still an EP.

Love aero's story upthread, sort of reminds me of the Alfred Molina scene in Boogie Nights, wonder how that would play with 'Gut Level' replacing 'Sister Christian'.

What's the latest on the reissues? I just realized it's my man Bill Nelson playing guitar on half the tracks on "Code" and in yhe video for "Here To Go". I love discovering new things about albums I've had for decades. I just gave it a spin and it's better than I remember, though I love it's predecessor much more.

How has no one mentioned Mal's new band, Wrangler, with Benge (whose work with John Foxx as the Maths is fantastic). Their new album is one of the best new releases of the year, a great melding of Virgin era CV and modern sounds.

Anyone have any thoughts on the various live albums released? I'm specifically interested in something good-sounding from their Virgin era (83-87).

Has there been any sign of any further early remasters after red Mecca came out a couple of years ago. Would love copies of those first couple of lps in better sound on cd.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7K-vkaWB0g

Nobody captured noirish paranoia better than Cabaret Voltaire. Like a William Friedkin movie in a song.

RHKs new album is very pre-Virgin era CV sounding.

I am listening to "Fool's Game" right now in honor of this revive

Funny how the 12" mix of "Blue Heat" wound up on the CD when there never was a 12" released. I'm guessing it was planned but the label said no.

Every couple of years I revisit early Cabs, and it just sounds better each time. I mean, I've always dug the singles but today I spun "2x45" (love it), "Three Mantras" (Western Mantra is epic, Eastern not as much), "Red Mecca" (still warming to some of it) and rediscovered Stephen Mallinder's solo album "Pow-Wow Plus" which has some fantastic tracks that would fit well on 2x45. I even ordered the rare CD edition of the latter though I noted it removes two tracks from the original EP (1-20 and 1-34).