Cabaret Voltaire – Sensoria

The first song I heard from them, a.k.a. how I discovered them. I never explored the rest of the work until recently.

I happened to see the video for this track on TV. I can’t recall if it was either Night Flight, Snub-TV or perhaps London Calling, but it hit like a bolt from the blue. The juxtaposition of an authoritarian preacher intoning the gospel of absolute servitude to one’s betters with slamming industrial beats 80 feet tall as well as a chorus of African women singing backing vocals was pretty singular at the time. The deeply insinuating vocals of Stephen Mallinder added their usual sinister appeal; all the moreso since Mallinder used only his phrasing to ratchet up the sense of menace in the music.

Unlike their avant garde trio phase on Rough Trade, the “imperial phase” of Cabaret V0ltaire coincided with the band being signed to Virgin through Stevo’s Some Bizzare label with the earlier year’s album “The Crackdown” being the harbinger of a new period of industrial funk for the band that saw them making me very happy indeed with each new release. Like their Sheffield pals Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh of Heaven 17, Mallinder and his cohort Richard Kirk sought to meld avant garde electronics with soul and funk influences; but what made them diverge significantly from the path that Heaven 17 ultimately took was their allegiance to Burroughsian cut-up technique. Their willingness to juxtapose content that was not necessarily related in order to create a “third mind” scenario that was richly evocative for its unplanned randomness.

In that way, this single itself was a sterling example of an early mashup. The track is actually fabricated from two different Cabaret Voltaire songs off of their “Micro-Phonies” album on 1984: “Sensoria” and “Do Right.” The album versions of each bear some resemblance to this 12″ single, but the remix by John Potoker [with uncredited sonic glue courtesy of Robin “M” Scott] is a thing of wonder. A rare musical example of a whole being greater than the sum of its parts. Relentlessly pounding machine energy is given an injection of funk and ironic reactionary commentary via the preacher, who by giving a sermon on obeying your superiors, plays right into Cab Volt’s fascination with exposing and disrupting the control process. The result is a dancefloor devastator and an example of the “industrial music” ethos the band trailblazed with Throbbing Gristle for over a decade before it reached the point of slickness that is evidenced here. The point where Cabaret Voltaire became a genre unto themselves with many followers in their wake of the NIN and Skinny Puppy ilk.

A Classic Industrial / Techno / Electro blend. This was the first Voltaire song I heard on the radio at night on KITS in SF. Very revolutionary for its time for sure. I guess this is the beginning of their turn to more Electro as opposed to their strictly Industrial sounds.