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Perhaps there should be a box-set opening with 'Sluggin' for Jesus' and then included this album, mini-LP 'Three Mantras' and 1981's stunning 'Red Mecca'? The classic 'Yashar'-single perfected this blend of samples, electronica, dub and world music - after that Watson left the band and the Cabs moved to Some Bizarre where they made wonderful mutant pop on albums like 'The Crackdown' and 'Microphonies.'
'The Voice of America' fuses samples, vox-continental drones, Kirk's DIY-jazz noise, Mal's dubby-basslines and hypnotic electronic percussion with lyrics and titles that nodded to the zeitgeist (the Iran hostage crisis, the Khomeni Revolution, the rise of Reagan, the invasion of Afghanistan, the Cold War etc). It's an album that demands to be listened to completely, everything a highlight - I love the proto-internet-dialling noises of 'Premonition' which fuse with robo-drones and proto-gabba (Aphex, Kid 606...it all comes from here!). The classic tracks 'This is Entertainment' and 'Obsession' are included - the latter rivals anything from 'Metal Box' (though the Cabs were doing the dubby thing the same time Lydon was playing Eddie Cochran style rock!). 'The Voice of America' is a fantastic LP and one that fits wonderfully alongside work by such acts as Throbbing Gristle, The Pop Group, 23 Skidoo, A Certain Ratio, Suicide and Fad Gadget. Probably my favourite era of the Cabs if you had to nail me to a timezone...
All the recognisable Cabaret Voltaire ingredients are there - from splurges of synth and guitar from Chris Watson and Richard H Kirk, and the hummable background basslines from Stephen Mallinder, to spliced taped voices from newscasts and films and Mallinder's own robotic vocals - all underwritten by typically odd syncopated drum beats. The best tracks, in my opinion, are those with strong percussive drive (Voice of America and Obsession)- forerunners of stuff they developed on Red Mecca and 2x45. Partially Submerged and Stay out of it, on the other hand, are more in line with their very early mid 70s work - sounding almost dadaist and improvised. Throbbing Gristle and 23 Skidoo fans fans will appeciate!
Overall, the album feels less slightly less coherent or unified than either Mix Up or Red Mecca, as if the Cabs weren't quite sure in which direction they were heading - abstract, punk or dance. Then again, this was a crossover time for lots of bands.
But for a good 'survey' of their work at this time, especially before Chris Watson left the band, The Voice Of America is worth your money! By the way, the very-difficult-to-get-hold-of Cabaret Voltaire video, released by the band on their own Doublevision label (Doublevision Presents Cabaret Voltaire), features a couple of tracks from this LP - including a magnificent Obsession.
Within this record, before they wanted to make people move, they created the ice, electronic freeze of the dark morbid late 70s. Stripping the outer plastic coating, painted with the sense of rock and roll candyfloss bonhomie, they exposed the glistening copper wire of a new colder genre. Crocodile clips attached to electrical coils, this became infused with one small part of Bowie neutron iciness, cranked from the 2 sides of Low and Heroes with a current of German expressionism and the clatter of DaDa. Cut ups, the sense of immminent collapse. As the current passed through the cable, the Cabs alchemised the energy into an art movement inspired new form of twist as in (ed). Cabaret Voltaire were firing on the late 70s cylinders of pure malevolent spirit of a dark internal adventure. This can be transposed with the the 21st C copying of the music school movement of quavers, clefts and semitones.
The final result ensnared but never tamed lies upon this platter. Another of those discs beamed from Phillip K Dicks Betelgeuse, this is the real Gannymede takeover, as the last decaying remnants of a dying civilisation bleep and tap their archaic proto language onto electrical pulses, communicating their plea to another lost world locked into depression dressed up as party time.
These are the thoughts that rear and buckle in the random dream segues, as firstly they throw the body forward, then jerk it back,finally yanking the hair upward, as the roots sear with pain and blood. Dimly lit, concrete corridors with banged tight metal doors, boom with the echo of hard tasked unemotional voices, barking orders on tin table tannoys.
The electrical tonalities on this album beam a world beyond the terror of 60's Dr.Who, which by the 70s had become kitsch-take. This invoked the sheer fear of sixties daleks, cybermen, bogeymen that only existed in every childs imagination.
This is a primitive world of disorder brought out of the bedroom into the wider world, making an electrical connection to those who could plug into the angst it invokes. It has a sublime beauty locked within, that brings out a pure piece of nostalgia for an era that has receded into the distance and is never coming back.
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