Narc. Magazine Online
Reliably informed
Lee Fisher enjoys a night of innovation, energy and raw electro power
Image: Cabaret Voltaire by Sam Wall, Boiler Shop
There’s a definite mutual respect thing between Gazelle Twin and Cabaret Voltaire, each perhaps recognising the other as a kindred spirit. So Gazelle Twin is a bold and fitting choice for support on several of the dates on this farewell Cabs tour, although GT (Elizabeth Bernholz) is generally far past support slots. It’s a rare chance to see her perform music from all her three main albums (Unflesh, Pastoral and Black Dog). Shorn of the conceptual trappings of those albums, what we get is Bernholz alone on a big stage – sharp suit, noirish lights – with her remarkable voice the focus, sometimes distorted or treated, other times just a powerful, affecting instrument in its own right. Her music draws from industrial influences, cutting edge electronics, harsh noise and pummelling beats, while her voice veers from alarming to sensual, commanding to broken. Genders switch, even accents, maybe even species. It’s a powerful start.
Cabaret Voltaire’s Stephen Mallinder is quick to point how appropriate the Boiler Shop is for his band (and, by turns, the shared industrial identities of Newcastle and their native Sheffield). And this grand old building is especially apt tonight: the bricks and pipes provided a fine backdrop for the band’s remarkable visuals, and the sound in the cavernous hall is really powerful.
We’re gathered to say farewell to a band that, while still largely unknown to most, cast a giant shadow across the last six decades of music. From their tape/cut-up experiments in the early seventies, via post-punk and industrial through to various flavours of techno futurism, Stephen Mallinder, Chris Watson and Richard H Kirk (sadly no longer with us) have been absurdly forward-thinking. As tonight’s genuinely incredible set flashed by, the insane cross-fertilisation of their career was increasingly evident, with Cabaret Voltaire influenced by and/or influencing everyone from Kraftwerk to Eno, Williams Burroughs and Gibson, Mark Stewart and Adrian Sherwood, LFO and Sheffield Bleep, LCD Soundsystem and electroclash. And on and on… Cabaret Voltaire were always intensely political, deeply (but probably appropriately) paranoid and heavily immersed in ideas about control, religion, state power and technology. This is the kind of thing that fuelled a hundred lesser careers in the eighties industrial scene but nobody did it was a well as the Cabs, and nobody made it so good to dance to.
Malinder and Watson were joined by Benge and Finlay Shakespeare on stage, while visuals – remixed and fucked up extracts from the Cabs’ multi-media DoubleVision archive – were from artist Dan Conway. And the Boiler Shop has never looked this good, the entire front part of the venue blasted with data feeds, video feedback, distorted newsreels and the rest. The set mostly drew on their eighties heyday and managed to be crowd-pleasing without being predictable, so we got timeless, game-changing bangers like Yashar, Just Fascination and Crackdown alongside deeper or less obvious cuts, and even a version of Chris Watson’s industrial piece Tinsley Viaduct. It all sounds incredible – Watson and Mallinder have repurposed old stems and kit for these farewell dates so it feels unmistakably like the Cabs but also refreshed and alive.
By the end of the set, the atmosphere in the room was electric and the applause deafening. The encore of Nag Nag Nag, I Want You and Sensoria was pure exhilaration, half a century of innovation and energy and sheer danceability condensed into three slabs of raw electro power. No band into their sixth decade has any right sounding so great and so forward-thinking, but that’s why Cabaret Voltaire more than warrant all the purple prose obituaries they’re getting as they finish up these last few dates on their well-deserved victory lap. Greatness.
