Here I've been going on about Sheffield and the great industrial dance music of the 80s and I haven't even gotten around to Cabaret Voltaire yet, arguably the godfathers of that whole scene. So to remedy that, here's the video for what is probably their best-known song, "Sensoria"--
This video was a pre-show staple at the 9:30 Club, and it got a lot of play on the college radio station, too, even though there was no station copy: everybody had their own. I recently read Industrial Evolution: Through the Eighties with Cabaret Voltaire by Mick Fish for a more-or-less firsthand account of CV's ascendancy. (More-or-less because Fish lived in London and only visited Sheffield on the weekends, where his childhood friend Paul Widger was his connection to the music scene.) It's a real DIY success story, because as Fish tells it, neither of the core duo of Richard Kirk and Stephen "Mal" Mallinder knew how to play any instruments when they started, and the vocal duties fell to Mal, who also didn't know how to sing. He developed an odd octave-jumping rap style for their first major-label album (The Crackdown, 1983) which, while effective for one or two songs, became rather grating after a whole album. He used the same style for "Sensoria" from the follow-up album, Microphonies (1984), but thankfully came up with some variations for the rest of the songs. CV had left their own Sheffield studio, Western Works, to record The Crackdown in London; Fish maintains this was a good move, giving the duo an outside perspective on their music and spurring some artistic growth. Of their return to Western Works to record Microphonies, he writes:
Microphonies had the feel of a band having second thoughts about commerciality. By recording under their own stem again at Western Works, it meant a return to the rougher more home-made approach of their earlier material. Obviously in Paul's opinion this was not altogether a bad thing. He tended to prefer the idea of the Cabs as a kind of electronic garage band rather than a dance act. But many others viewed it as a step backwards. It seemed that after a flirtation with the big time, they were still hovering on an island of indecision between the indie and mainstream seas.
Alas, they hovered until it was too late, and mainstream success slipped away from them even as they finally secured major-label support in the US. That said, I think Microphonies is superior to the rather monotonous The Crackdown, and they kept up a high level of danceability and creativity for a few good years. Their huge catalog of both experimental and dance-oriented electronic music is an impressive legacy. Since their breakup, Mallinder resurfaces with new music very rarely, but Kirk has produced tons of music under a small army of pseudonyms and through myriad collaborations. Come to think of it, I've got a lot of catching up to do on that.
"Sensoria" has been blessed with a reference in a Jonathan Carroll novel, A Child Across the Sky (IIRC): it is the opening theme music for an arts radio show hosted by one of the characters. I think. That reference alone should keep it bubbling around for decades to come.
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