Hai!
(Rough Trade) Used LP $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Recorded live in Tokyo in 1982. Sparse rhythms and dark, abrasive montages, loops and samples of found sounds. The material is less raw and fragmented than the band’s initial punk releases, but the rhythmic component is still central to the equation. U.S. pressing from 1982
Johnny Yesno
(Doublevision) Used LP $5.00 (Out-of-stock)
Beautifully echoed, broodingly psychotic, morally compromised atmospheres that bridge the paranoid bricolage of their early records and the increasingly minimalist, dancefloor-conscious rhythms of latter era.
Mix-Up
(Rough Trade) Used LP $18.00 (Out-of-stock)
Their first album, released in 1979, impressively harnesses noise, primitive rhythm box percolations, tape loops, garbled vocals, and blasts of Farfisa. Look for ugly slabs of dub with frizzling snaps of white-heat buzz, clunky percussion, and plodding basslines forming skanking, roiling rhythms. Both the bass and incidental vocals are relegated to the back of the mix as the piercing detritus takes center stage. For all the manual binning and sandblasting of rock’s elemental properties, the band makes an acid-damaged rock song like The Seeds’ “No Escape” sound even more damaged while retaining its spirit, nerve, and structure. The remainder of the album hisses and hectors in a similar fashion, tidily bundling pop-song length pieces that will do nothing for that headache of yours.
Radiation
(Get Back ) Used LP $20.00
Mid-1980s BBC recordings from the godfathers of electro-industrial; arrangements are stripped down to a barebones, minimalist approach that is harder and funkier than the studio album cuts from three period. Includes three tracks from nowhere else in the Cabaret Voltaire discography. 2001 pressing
The Voice Of America
(Rough Trade) Used LP $10.00 (Out-of-stock)
Displaying how noisy, abrasive, and unpleasant an album can be without becoming a total drag, this 1980 record has an anchor in its increased use of rhythm. Sickly demented drones of cacophony are twisted and doctored in new ways and make for compelling listening. Recordings of dive-bombing war planes may or may not be intertwined and distorted (not knowing for sure is only part of the thrill). Dubby rhythms are equally anemic in the background. Electro-surges predict comic doom behind a deep, growling voice.
Three Crepuscule Tracks
(Rough Trade) Used 12-inch $10.00
“In transition between the found-vocals / art-noise period and a commitment to dance-floor electronics,” notes Trouser Press, “ ‘Sluggin’ fer Jesus (Part One)’ is a masterful combination of the two, as a right-wing TV preacher demands large cash contributions over a powerful, trance-inducing synth beat.” U.S. pressing from 1981
Three Mantras
(Rough Trade) Used LP $15.00
Two sidelong pieces that expand the trio’s avant-electronic-grunge into trancier realms. The alien feeling at the core of Cabaret Voltaire remains, though, strong and strange as always. 1980 pressing