Cabaret Voltaire - Red Mecca [Vinyl]

The Cabaret Voltaire of Richard Kirk (guitars and keyboards) and Stephen Mallinder (percussion and vocals) in a sense spearheaded the "industrial" movement, defining its stereotype and decisive turning points: an impressive body of recordings, almost all of them of mediocre quality, as pretentious as they were banal, and a rapid conversion to dance music.

They came to light as a trio (Chris Watson the third) at the dawn of industrial music in the Sheffield that would become its epicenter.

Cabaret Voltaire's early recordings accomplish as elemental as they are prescient a fusion of electronics, psychedelia and world-music. The experiments with electronic instruments of Kraftwerk and Neu are married to the dilated psychedelia of early Pink Floyd and the spirit (if not the sounds) of the music-trance of Asia (Arabia, India, Tibet, Japan). The result is far less "industrial" than the labels of the time compel them to be: the arsenal of tapes, rhythm generators, filters, synthesizers (and guitar, the only remnant of rock and roll, but horrendously distorted) lean toward explorations of the psyche rather than the techno-sociological "je accuse" of their cousins Throbbing Gristle.

Red Mecca (RoughTrade, 1981 - Mute, 2001), despite being one of their most violent works, sanctions the abandonment of abrasive electronics and hypnotic recitative and the advent of a more moderate form-song rock with danceable pulse and minimal melodies (Red Mask, Sly Doubt). Emotions are still lacking in A Touch Of Evil, A Thousand Ways, and Spread The Virus.

Source: https://www.scaruffi.com/vol4/cabaret.html

Tracklist:

A1 A Touch Of Evil 00:00
A2 Sly Doubt 03:10
A3 Landslide 08:03
A4 A Thousand Ways 10:08
B1 Red Mask 20:35
B2 Split Second Feeling 27:25
B3 Black Mask 31:20
B4 Spread The Virus 34:23
B5 A Touch Of Evil (Reprise) 38:00