Cabaret Voltaire - The Crackdown (1983) 12/09/2008

Cabaret Voltaire was one of two bands that invented industrial music independently of each other in the mid-70s (the other Throbbing Gristle, also from England). The group was founded by Stephen Mallinder, Richard H. Kirk and Chris Watson, who started off experimenting with tape loops and broken analog equipment in their attic; later, Chris Watson quit the group to form The Hafler Trio and do solo work in ambient and field recordings. Kirk and Mallinder continued as CabVolt and eventually took the band into a more commercial direction, pioneering the dark electronic and dance music of the 80s and 90s. It is perhaps because of this that CV's reputation has suffered much more than that of Throbbing Gristle (which self-destructed early); their later albums were the link between the musique-concrete industrial of the early 80s and the laughably bad dance-metal industrial of the 90s. We shouldn't be too harsh on them, though; 1983's The Crackdown is probably the album most responsible for this, and it's evidence that this direction seemed a good idea at the time, or sounded like one. Dark synths, paranoid dance music. It's still pretty easy to laugh at it, but that doesn't mean it isn't good.

download: part1, part2