The Sheffield-based band Cabaret Voltaire were pioneers of electronica, post-punk, and noise rock. Their catalog covers a whole lot of ground, from tape-loop stuff to proto-ambient excursions into realms few others explored. The players made dance music in the mid-Eighties but being able to do that was sort of an earned luxury for being so abrasive and radical earlier on. Mute Records is dropping two essential reissues tomorrow, with one of these albums never having been available before. Cabaret Voltaire 1974-76 is a collection of the band's earliest experiments while Chance Versus Causality is a soundtrack to a 1979 film. That score has never been legally available before, and the compilation has gone out-of-print since its original release in the Nineties.
Cabaret Voltaire 1974-76 contains the earliest tape explorations from Chris Watson, Richard H. Kirk, and Stephen Mallinder. The set goes from "Do The Snake", a dance number made out of a caveman stomp, to the brief "In The Quest of the Unusual", a sinister blend of radio noise and primitive pulses. Elsewhere, "The Outer Limits" suggests that the players had been watching that show, and perhaps The Man Who Fell To Earth, considering how alien the sounds are here, while the epic "She Loved You" is a total de-construction of "She Loves You" by The Beatles, here rendered as if heard in a nightmare. Some of what's here on Cabaret Voltaire 1974-76 is oddly beautiful ("Venusian Animals", "Fade Crisis"), but lots more is, like opener "The Dada Man", insistent electronica of the kind that -- clearly -- influenced future artists like Nine Inch Nails and Colourbox.
The best way to begin a discussion of Chance Versus Causality is to read the press material on the release:
"Chance Versus Causality was recorded in 1979 as the soundtrack for director Babeth Mondini's film of the same name. The band originally met Mondini at the infamous Brussels Plan K show which saw Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire and William Burroughs share a bill, and soon after, Mondini asked them to create the soundtrack for her film. Chance Versus Causality was improvised in a similar vein to what the band refer to as their live 'ambient sets' which are described as having 'less rhythm, more tape.' The soundtrack was recorded live by the original Cabaret Voltaire line up -- Richard H. Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson -- at the band's Western Works studio with no prior knowledge of the film or instruction from the director."
All that being said, Chance Versus Causality, with its generically-titled tracks, serves best as nearly-ambient music, perhaps for a film of one's own imagining. While "Part 2" has a nice Non-like menace to it, the other numbers here work best nearly as mood music. Made up of tape samples and found sound in spots, the seven tracks on this score illustrate the wildly-adventurous and avant-garde side of Cabaret Voltaire, and the release itself serves as a nice reminder of just how transgressive the compositions of this Sheffield three-piece could be.
Cabaret Voltaire 1974-76 and Chance Versus Causality are out via Mute Records.
Richard H. Kirk is working on a new Cabaret Voltaire record. More details on that, and on these valuable reissues can be found via the official Facebook page for the band.
[Photos: Mute Records]