The Best Band You’ve Never Heard: Cabaret Voltaire, Sheffield’s electronic pioneers
Though it’s sometimes overshadowed by the unrelenting nostalgia for Madchester and the sheer number of bands spat out of the capital, Sheffield has managed to secure its rightful place in the music history of the UK. It’s home to essential indie outfits like Arctic Monkeys and Pulp and a swathe of synth-pop ranging from Heaven 17 to The Human League, but one of the city’s most innovative outfits has flown under the radar comparatively.
If you Google Cabaret Voltaire, your search results will include tales of the wild goings-on of Hugo Ball’s club in Zürich, the slightly less Dadaist listings of an Edinburgh-based club of the same name, and information about Sheffield’s most innovative and underrated musical exports. Cabaret Voltaire borrowed their name from the former of those clubs, intrigued by the Dada movement and its irrational, nonsensical, destructive tendencies.
Their interest in an art movement that pre-dated their existence by half a century, combined with their collective love of glam-rock and experimentation with technology, would lead to the birth of Cabaret Voltaire (the band) in 1973. Made up of trio Richard H. Kirk, Chris Watson and Stephen Mallinder, the group overlaid the latter’s declarative vocals with electronics they had experimented with themselves, filling their city with the sound of Cabaret Voltaire through the random dissemination of tape recorders.
Between their Dadaist-inspired experimentation, steel city origins, and the interest of Throbbing Gristle, the band became associated with industrial music, but Kirk maintained that this was never their intention. “People took the industrial thing from Throbbing Gristle,” he once told Loud and Quiet, “their slogan was ‘Industrial music for industrial people’.”
“I think people put two and two together and made five with us because Sheffield was known for industry at that time,” he explained, “We never said that about ourselves; we actually described what we did in those days as ‘experimental pop music.’” Though their sound may seem a far cry from the pop music that dominates airplay now, Cabaret Voltaire certainly honed a more danceable and melodic sound than their heavier peers in the genre, their penchant for pop also demonstrating a refreshing lack of pretension.
They also cut through the post-punk and new-wave scenes that dominated the era, though they didn’t entirely escape them. Cabaret Voltaire signed to Rough Trade in the late 1970s and put out a song that would become one of their biggest hits, ‘Nag Nag Nag’. Infusing their electronic (or experimental pop) stylings with the influence of garage and psych, it was loud and full of intent.
From there, the sky was the limit for Cabaret Voltaire’s genre experimentation. They dipped their toes further into post-punk, though they always stood out from the rest, dove head first into synth-pop like their Sheffield-based contemporaries, and even eventually ventured into techno and acid house. They were true innovators and artists with their instruments, their sound, and their performance, so much so that they inspired the likes of electronic giants New Order with their work.
But while Cabaret Voltaire shared bills with Joy Division and hometown with charting synth-poppers, their innovation never quite received the same acclaim or audience. They’ve been rightly helmed as pioneers of their craft, but only by those in the know. For those who are in the know, though, Cabaret Voltaire remain one of the most important bands to come out of Sheffield and one of the most innovative outfits in the electronic and industrial spheres, though the latter statement may have irked a young Kirk.
Listen to Cabaret Voltaire below.