Richard Kirk: Cabaret Voltaire Electronica

Considered by some to be a guru of the new dance, mixing driving beats with eclectic found sounds, Cabaret Voltaire's Richard H. Kirk remains an influential voice. Mark J. Prendergast tracks him down.

Cabaret Voltaire put the breakbeat into British music. Now 20 years old, they have been a major influence on UK House music and, amongst other things, on the Zooropa‑ry of U2. Bono and the other boys readily admit the importance and influence of Cabaret Voltaire, both as original Dadaist Zurich club and as late '70s post‑industrial media terrorists.

Beginnings

Cabaret Voltaire began their musical life in a flat in Sheffield, equipped only with an EMS VCS3 synthesizer, an oscillator, and a Revox tape machine. The trio — Kirk, Mallinder, and Watson — drew their inspiration from Pierre Schaeffer, Stockhausen and Can. Their arena was sound for sound's sake and they wrote letters to Brian Eno seeking advice. Caught up in the rush of indie labels that was the post‑punk zeitgeist of the late 1970s, Cabaret Voltaire burst on the scene with a form of electronic music that used the outside world as its raw material. As lynchpins of a new avant‑garde, they aligned themselves not with contemporary musicians but with the literary inventions of William Burroughs.

After the zenith and five‑figure sales that was Red Mecca in 1981, Chris Watson left to devote his life to bird sounds. Kirk and Mallinder gravitated more to the beat and America. Mixers like John 'Tokes' Potoker made singles like the 1984 'Sensoria' dance‑floor smashes of their time. By the late '80s the duo were in Chicago soaking up the original House scene and getting black mix stars like Marshall Jefferson (of 'Move Your Body' fame) to work on their sound. Back in England, the likes of Paul Oakenfold supported their re‑emergence as proud gurus of the new dance craze.

The '90s have so far been a cool period for Cabaret Voltaire . No longer seen as indie stars of yesteryear's NME, they have now consolidated a new following and a new kind of music. Albums like Body And Soul, Colours, Plasticity and International Language took Techno and the Ambient sound into a new dimension of sophistication and smoothness. Richard Kirk's own work with Sweet Exorcist and his first solo venture Sandoz, a synthesis of world music and electronics, represents some of the best electronic music around. To celebrate their commitment and longevity, I spoke to Richard H. Kirk about all manner of things Voltaire.

Evolution

There was a period during your career on Parlophone when you seemed to be out of the public eye. Post‑EMI, your sound became pretty contemporary. Why?

"It was to do with my involvement in Sweet Exorcist and getting really into the electronic dance thing. I hooked up with Richard Barrett in Sheffield (aka DJ Parrot), who had a number of hits with the Funky Worm on a label called Warp, which is pretty big now. It was a question of being on EMI for God‑knows‑how‑long and not being allowed to release many records. When we were on Virgin between '83 and '85, it was like 'wow!' — they let you get on with it. With EMI there were larger amounts of money involved and more interference. On the second and last album, Groovy, Laidback & Nasty, there were too many voices being heard and in the end only the EP was real Cabaret Voltaire."

The image of Cabaret Voltaire has always been less important than the sound. Was it always a case of the noises you came up with coupled with the experiments in video being the image?

"Yes, and it also suited us. I'm not into projecting an image. During the '70s and '80s image was very important. What's good about House is that it's the sound of the music that matters — what you look like is irrelevant. There have been a lot of very fashion‑oriented things going on in the business. The retro groups are not only making music that has been done twice or three times before, but it is the fourth time we've seen this kind of image and style being presented as new."

Is Stockhausen still an influence?

"In terms of attitude towards sound, probably now more than five years ago. Stockhausen and John Cage, of course, in terms of sound, ambience, and 'found' recordings. But it's never been a case of us trying to reproduce what they were doing."

How do you view the music you've been making recently — the Plasticity and International Language albums?

"International Language went in a very hard direction, like something from the late '70s in terms of its sound sources. It used things like old drum machines that are sampled, looped, and played around with. It was specifically made for CD, with a special mix done with three DAT players, using crossfading to bring in quite a lot of random elements. Randomness, that's what came back with that release. Plasticity had everything programmed and automated by machines; with International Language there's a whole other album going on within it and which keeps coming to the surface."

How much are you influenced by Chicago and Detroit music?

"One good thing about the EMI period was that we did go to the USA and work with Marshall Jefferson, which was amazing. We met all of his friends, who were part of the original House scene, like Armando and Mike Dunn. Quite a lot of these people used to drop by the studio in Chicago while we were working. Ironically, Cabaret Voltaire were more well known in America at the time, while these guys were huge names in Britain."

Why do you think this House music took off in the late '80s?

"People were just looking for a way forward, and because of certain chemical ingestions and a desire for liberation, the whole thing just gelled in 1987. Things have steadied since then, and the more forward edges of House have been sucked into the mainstream. That's why on the newer stuff we do, the rhythm is not so much to the forefront. House has now become electronic music rather than dance music. There's also much more of an interest in Ambient music."

How would you describe your solo recording Sandoz?

"Well it's not Ambient, because there are too many drums and things on it. The sounds are the result of my listening over the past six months. Moments are 'techno' in the same sense that Model 500 or Derrick May are 'techno', but not in the sense of what they call Techno today (150 bpm?). Sandoz is just me hanging out and having fun, trying to be a bit more melodic than usual. Originally, it came out as 12‑inch singles and no‑one knew who it was. It was great to distribute 500 copies to DJs and to the shops around Sheffield without people knowing who it was. It was back to the DIY ethic — and that's what modern electronic music is all about now. Most of the stuff is made in somebody's bedroom, which is not too dissimilar to punk — the desire to express something with one chord or one sequence or one sampled note."

In reality, people are constantly re‑inventing music. Younger people will always find things from the past and present them in a new way by adding something of themselves.

Are you still interested in film/video and its use on stage?

"There was a 60‑minute video to go with Plasticity and some live dates we did — a festival in Holland — contained over an hour's worth of new visuals. We bought a special Panasonic video mixer and effects generator and just set to work with it. It's like an audio mixer, only you hook up two or three VHS players to it instead. It's got a digitising section and costs only £500, and it meant we could do most of the visuals at home. When we first started working in that field 10 years ago, you would have paid £5,000 or £10,000 for a toy like that. We've gone back to using video projections after the 16mm stuff we used when we were on EMI and had a huge budget to play around with. Now we use our imagination more."

Are you still interested in the academic side of experimental music — is it still a life‑giving force for you or something just lost in its own world?

"Well, even Phillip Glass is a popular classical composer now. He even performs versions of David Bowie's and Brian Eno's music. It's weird, but as time goes on more stuff like that will filter into the mainstream. Will Steve Reich? Maybe not, but who knows? Things like that will always exist. People outside the field of Rock music will look at those people and continue to draw inspiration from them. That's a parallel thing which is always going to be there. It's like the cliche that Pop is dead. In reality, people are constantly re‑inventing music. Younger people will always find things from the past and present them in a new way by adding something of themselves."

Who do you look to for inspiration?

"I've listened to Fela Kuti a lot. I saw him at Brixton Academy and that was the best musical event I've seen for a long time. A 40‑piece orchestra came on stage and built this music up from something really quiet — and only 30 minutes later did Fela appear. I like music that builds and builds and then just lets go. I listen to Jazz and quite a lot of Dub. There is quite a lot of stuff coming out of Holland on a label called D‑Jax, which is bringing out some interesting music under the dance banner. They don't seem to care whether it's played in a club or not. It's pure electronic music really."

Are you still influenced by writers?

"We're still into Burroughs, who is a massive influence; in terms of body of work and the influence that he's had, he's a key figure of our time. He's one of the clearest‑thinking and shrewdest movers of the 20th century."

Any further comments on the ambisonic deluxe sound of your International Language album?

"Well, firstly, it's not specifically about music — it's political, in a leftish way. People over here have been ground down a lot by the government — you are either in or out. Creativity is stifled, and people's fighting spirit is weak. This recording is there to strengthen people's spirit. I think that the idea of intelligence in music has now resurfaced. The ideas of William Gibson will feed through more now, like the way music will in the near future be fed through to people's homes. International Language samples ourselves: 'Taxi Mutant' uses samples of 'Taxi Music' off Johnny Yesno. Do you know that the Aphex Twin music is made up of constant resampling of his own music? This new album does sound good, because of the tri‑stereo image effect that we achieved on the mix."

Would you say that your music is driven more by ideas than technology?

"Well, it used to be the case that a new piece of equipment would spawn a new album, or at least several new tracks. But because it's all sampling‑based, it's more sound oriented in terms of things we find on other records. We use the standard Akai S1000 sampler without expanded memory. We used to use the Fairlight with a programmer, when we were on Virgin — we used it on the album Microphonies — but that's a real dinosaur thing now." (Laughs).