Cabaret Voltaire

Cabaret Voltaire was one of the earliest electronic industrial-dance groups. Along with Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV, the trio had a profound influence on the techno, ambient, and industrial styles that came to prominence in the late '80s and early '90s.

Little is known about the members of Cabaret Voltaire, except that in the early '70s, seven teenagers came together in the industrial city of Sheffield, England, and began making tapes of noises to play at parties for laughs. The group was soon whittled down to just Stephen Mallinder, Richard Kirk, and Christopher Watson, who hooked up with the music department at Sheffield Haddam University and gained access to a synthesizer, tape recorders, and other instruments.

Inspired by the dada art movement, the ambient work of Brian Eno, and its industrial environment, Cabaret Voltaire blended the sounds of everyday objects with the textures of musical instruments to create aural collages of noise, beats, and disembodied vocals. They named themselves after the dadaist club formed in Zurich in 1917 by Hugo Ball.

Cabaret Voltaire’s early recordings are harsh and abrasive; its first EP contains a distorted version of Lou Reed’s “Here She Comes Now.” As the group matured during its prolific early-’80s period, it became increasingly interested in Middle Eastern sounds and more accessible dance music; it hit an artistic peak with 1982’s 2 X 45.

Watson left the group in 1981 to work in television, and later showed up with the avant-garde Hafler Trio. By the mid-’80s Cabaret Voltaire’s music had become slicker, though the group never scored a major hit. In the late ’80s it had begun flirting with house music, releasing 12 different mixes of the 1989 single “Hypnotized.” In the early ’90s Cabaret Voltaire returned to the more ambient sounds of its earlier days, and then disappeared from the scene as mysteriously as the group entered it. Its most recent album of new material was 1994’s The Conversation, followed six years later by the archival BBC Recordings 1984–86.

from The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll (Simon & Schuster, 2001)