Cabaret Voltaire
Red Mecca

Pure and raw industrial, musique concrète, synth-pop, new wave... and also funk, disco, house, techno, electro, ambient, idm. These are just a few of the many phases traversed in the career of the English band Cabaret Voltaire, phases undoubtedly linked by an important common denominator: experimentation. Some more markedly (as in the case of the earliest and radical pieces available on the post-collections "1974-1976," "Methodology"), others less so (as heard on already more conventional albums like "The Crackdown"), and in hindsight, mostly the product of the "mind" of guitarist/keyboardist/trumpeter and then producer Richard H. Kirk. This would become evident in his equally prolific and chameleon-like solo career (stylistically a sort of B-side to the Sheffield group), showing how important he was to the band. 

Stephen Mallinder on bass (dubbed, deep), vocals (lascivious and demonic) percussion (dirty and obsessive in pure industrial tradition), and Chris Watson (noise/tapes, later ousted) complete the lineup in its most flourishing period, both artistically and productively, from the beginnings in the late '70s till the pre-lighter sound phase that came in the late '80s. This period saw the release of debated and far from unforgettable works like "Code" and "Body and Soul." During this era comes "Red Mecca," a clear testament to the Voltairian work that encapsulates in just over forty minutes most of the above styles, later explored in a form less abstract and more structured than in the free and violent flow of this third 1981 work, where it's not difficult to spot, among others, strange examples of disfigured and "whitened" funk, disco music for lobotomized or a primordial example of EBM very similar to what would soon be developed by bands like Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb.  

Sick sounds, alien-like atmospheres, and skeletal drum machines are the main elements of a picture that is then an encyclopedic voice of these 'second' Cabaret Voltaire, less violent/distorted/provocative compared to their beginnings and other industrial bands of the time - decidedly more pushed - (Test Dept, Throbbing Gristle, Coil, SPK..), but instead, very close to an albeit faded song form. However, in their soul, nothing has changed; there is still a sense of rot. To the point of suffocation: the disturbing strokes of "A Touch of Evil" (which draws on Jon Hassell's world music as well as nearby industrial-dub experiments from 23 Skidoo), the punk beat of "Spread the Virus" and the mechanical funk of "Sly Doubt" (complete with an alluring and very dark bass line) equally illustrate both the new pseudo-song form and the undeniable originality in joining different realities connected by the thread of industrial sound, and therefore the dirty and metallic sounds, processed tapes, the chaotic sonic nihilism that is characteristic of the band. And experimentation, of course, which also comes through in the way instruments are used: Mallinder's bongos, for example, are used more as noise than percussion, and Kirk's guitar is distorted beyond recognition until it resembles a synth more than a guitar, and in "Red Mecca," it plays a fundamental role, creating schizoid dissonances and delirious sound walls as noticeable on the hallucinatory cacophonies of "Red Mask", "A Thousand Ways" and "Split Second Feeling". 

Also notable are the cosmic-dissonant trip "Black Mask" and the dark-robotic dance with echoes of Kraftwerk "Landslide", which testify to Kirk's passion for all branches of electronics, which over the years would lead him to embrace both the minimal-synth, wave, and electro periods of the '80s and all the flourishing currents of ambient-techno, idm, house, and techno of the next decade, complete with a contract on a glorious Warp Records still in its infancy. And I would feel like reevaluating these releases too, for example, the grand "International Language" of 1993 under the name Cabaret Voltaire, but evidently now a Kirkian creature, or his solo works — many, dispersed, but almost always of high quality — often overshadowed in favor of the glorious industrial period that was of the better-known band. An incredibly important period, which "Red Mecca" more than any other properly represents. Essential.