Cabaret Voltaire's classic first singles

The group's debut record, Extended Play, was released by Rough Trade in October 1978. Somewhere between 1977 and 1979, the classic Cabaret Voltaire sound took shape: the hissing high hats and squelchy snares of the rhythm-generator; Chris Watson's smears of synth slime; Stephen Mallinder's dankly pulsing bass; and Richard Kirk's spikes of shattered-glass guitar.

Everything coalesces on singles like "Silent Command" and "Seconds Too Late" to create a stalking hypno-groove feel somewhere between death disco and Eastern Bloc skank.

Cabaret Voltaire - Second Too Late 1980

On other singles - "Nag Nag Nag", "Jazz the Glass" - there's an almost charming sixties garage-punk feel, the fuzztone guitar and Farfisa organ vamps recalling ? & The Mysterians or The Seeds.

Cabaret Voltaire - Nag Nag Nag 1979


Cabaret Voltaire - Jazz the Glass 1981

You can hear the chill wind, the icy silver-machine whoosh of Kirk's guitar sound emerging on "The Set Up" on the debut EP.

Cabaret Voltaire - The Set Up 1978

Another Cabaret Voltaire hallmark was dehumanizing Mallinder's vocal via creepy treatments that made him sound reptilian, alien, or, at the extreme, like some kind of metallic or mineralized being. On "Silent Command", for instance, Mal's vocal bubbles like molten glass being blown into distended shapes.

Cabaret Voltaire - Silent Command 1979

Visiting USA for the first time in November 1979 inspired the sophomore album The Voice of America: the band caught wind of the impending shift to the right with Reagan and his born-again Christian constituency.

"A big novelty for a bunch of kids from England, where TV finished at eleven o'clock and there were only three channels, was the fact that America had all-night TV and loads of stations. We just locked into this televangelist Eugene Scott, who had a low-rent show that was all about raising money. And the only reason he wanted money was to stay on the air", says Kirk. Scott's voice ended up on the Cabs' classic single "Sluggin for Jesus".

Cabaret Voltaire - Sluggin' for Jesus 1980

1980's mini album Three Mantras was an oblique response to events in the Middle East.

Its two tracks "Eastern Mantra" and "Western Mantra", contrasted the evil twins of fundamentalist Islam and born-again Christian America, beloved enemies locked in a clinch of clashing civilizations.

Cabaret Voltaire - Eastern Mantra 1980


Cabaret Voltaire - Western Mantra 1980

"It kind of culminated with the third album, Red Mecca. It's not called that by coincidence. We weren't referencing the fucking Mecca Ballroom in Nottingham!", recalls Kirk. 

Purely through its sonic turbulence and tense rhythms, Red Mecca also seemed to tap into closer-to-home issues: the urban riots of summer 1981, unrest stoked by mounting unemployment as Thatcher's deflationary policies kicked in, then ignited by insensitive policing in inner-city areas.

The early recordings of Cabaret Voltaire

You can hear a Burroughsian influence - the flat, matter-of-fact depiction of extreme and grotesque acts of sex and violence - in the spoken-word voice-overs that accompany some early Cabaret Voltaire pieces, such as the fetid imagery of "Bed Time Stories": "With dogs that are trained to sniff out corpses/Eat my remains but leave my feet/I'll hold a séance with Moroccan rapists/Masturbating end over end".

Cabaret Voltaire - Bed Time Stories 1974

Creaky and homespun, the Cabs' early stabs at musique concrète, such as "Dream Sequence Number Two Ethel's Voice", have an alien-yet-quaint quality, while more ferocious tracks like "Henderson Reversed Piece Two", all rattling, synthetic percussion and soiled sheets of sound, recall avant-classical electronic composers such as Morton Subotnick.

Cabaret Voltaire - Henderson Reversed Piece Two 1974

First releases on Rough Trade Records

Two full years elapsed between the opening of the first Rough Trade store and the label's debut release in February 1978: Metal Urbain's "Paris Maquis". "We thought they were the French Sex Pistols", says Geoff Travis (Rough Trade's founder). Next came an Augustus Pablo single. But it was ROUGH 3 - the Extended Play EP by Sheffield experimental trio Cabaret Voltaire - that really tapped the emergent postpunk gestalt.

Metal Urbain - Paris Maquis 1978


Cabaret Voltaire - Here She Comes Now (Velvet Underground cover) 1978


But what really put the label on the map and made the majors sit up and take apprehensive notice was when Inflammable Material, the Rough Trade album by Belfast punk band Stiff Little Fingers, went straight onto the U.K.'s national pop charts at number fourteen in February 1979.

Stiff Little Fingers - Wasted Life 1979

Lo-fi electronic music

In mid-1978, a curious spate of cultural synchronicity found "Warm Leatherette" being released at around the same time as several other lo-fi electronic singles, all put out on indie labels: Throbbing Gristle's "United", Cabatet Voltaire's Extended Play EP, Human League's "Being Boiled", Robert Rental's "Paralysis" and Thomas Leer's "Private Plane".
"There was this period when they all came out, one after the other", recalls Leer. "And it was like, 'Where are all these weird records coming from?' None of us knew each other. There was obviously something brewing."
Actually, Thomas Leer and Robert Rental did know each other. Two Scottish friends who'd moved down to London at the height of punk, Leer and Rental, like Miller, were inspired to put out their own records by the Desperate Bicycles' example.

Throbbing Gristle - United - 1978


Cabaret Voltaire - Do the Mussolini - 1978


The Human League - Being Boiled - 1978


Robert Rental - Paralysis - 1978


"Private Plane" sounded electronic, but Leer didn't actually own a synth. Instead he processed his guitar and bass using various gadgets and played Rental's stylophone (a gimmicky electronic keyboard played with a pen) through an echo effect. All these gauzy silverswirl textures gave "Private Plane" an ethereal feel perfect for its mood of remote serenity tinged with wistfulness, loosely inspired by a recent TV program about the reclusive multimillionaire Howard Hughes. Leer's fey voice is equally perfect, but owed something to contingency: he had to whisper the vocal because the recording took place at night in his one-room apartment and he didn't want to wake his girlfriend.

Thomas Leer - Private Plane - 1978