Cabaret Voltaire

2022 Re-press on limited edition Curacao colour vinyl * Stone cold classic Cabaret Voltaire from 1983, resplendent in a new master, and framing the band getting electro-funky after the departure of Chris Watson - a huge influence on everyone from Ministry and NIN to Mark Fell and even early Goa types  ‘The Crackdown’ marks the point, after Chris Watson’s departure, when the Sheffield legends bridged earlier experimental urges with a funkier steez owing heavily to Afro-American dance music. As these things (still) go, the album would really strike a nerve with US industrial audiences, effectively reframing and selling back their own funk, but dressed up to their anglophilic tastes

Anyway, stranger things have happened, and ‘The Crackdown’ stands as a landmark ‘80s record, here in its 2013 master and expanded with four tracks taken from the contemporaneous VHS, ‘Doublevision Presents: Cabaret Voltaire’.   It’s properly brimming with nuggets , not least the swaggering funk of ’24-24’, but also the campier NRG of ‘Animation’, their taut swerve on ‘Over and Over’, and golden prototypes for New Beat and darkroom disco styles in ‘Just Fascination’ and the kinky swivel of the title tune. The four bonus tracks are now also equally classic, with unmissable club tackle inthe twitching metallic funk of ‘Diskono’, plus the standout beat-less synth shimmer of ’Theme from Doublevision’ and ‘Moscow’, and sleazier skronk in ‘Badge of Evil’.