CABARET VOLTAIRE: THE CRACKDOWN (1983)
1) 24-24; 2) In The Shadows;
3) Talking Time; 4) Animation; 5) Over And Over; 6) Just Fascination; 7) Why
Kill Time (When You Can Kill Yourself); 8) Haiti; 9) Crackdown.
Oh, looks like someone's tired of being unjustly confused with a guitar band. Taking
their mission one step further, Cabaret Voltaire now place severe restrictions
on guitar-based melodies, and plunge into the seductive waters of electronica. The Crackdown is far less noisy than
their previous releases — still dark gray, still a disturbing weight on your
conscious, but «cleaner» and more polished than it used to be. More sterile,
too, you could say.
The opening track, ʻ24-24ʼ, sounds like
something Prince could have come up with — the same electrofunky type of
rhythm, same drum machine sound, same approach to the mechanics of the groove
to get you up and dancin' in that early Eighties style. Except Prince would
have made the number all pretty and optimistic, whereas in the hands of Cabaret
Voltaire all such grooves become zombie rituals, so we have unsettling lyrics
("turning out, beggars to eat me"), hushed creepy voices, keyboards
that sound like marinated church organs, and an atmosphere of total coldness
and detachment. These here are the roots of IDM — because if this ain't
«intelligent dance music», then what is? (Then again, so was Kraftwerk, so the
term is really useless).
Most of what follows is the same: groove after
groove, constructed out of dark electronic textures, sometimes peppered with
extra ingredients (the brass section on ʻTaking Timeʼ), but always setting the
same mood. Actually, mood-wise this new style may be said to work better than
the old one: Mallinder's out-of-the-shadow vocals are now higher and cleaner in
the mix, and throughout the entire album there's a sense of some magic eye,
benevolent or malicious, watching over your shoulder, as you make the journey
through the twisted alleys of evil electrofunk. Melody-wise or hook-wise, though,
I am not even sure where to begin in an attempt to single out any highlights or
simply to talk about the points and effects of any particular track.
The closest thing to a potential «hit» on the
record is probably ʻJust Fascinationʼ — as Mallinder moves one step closer to
singing than hissing and hushing, the track begins to sound uncannily like
classic Depeche Mode, and suddenly, Cabaret Voltaire get access to associations
of deep dark sexuality that they never really had before. Bad news, though —
they don't know very well how to exploit that, nor do they seem to really want
to, so essentially the effort is wasted: not too many horny teenagers would
probably make use of The Crackdown
in 1983, as compared to Construction
Time Again. Then again, Cabaret Voltaire would never stoop to becoming a real pop band, would it? To ensure that
nothing of the sort ever happens, they name one of the tracks ʻWhy Kill Time
When You Can Kill Yourselfʼ, setting themselves up for lawsuits of suicide propaganda
— except, since this record never sold that much, nobody bothered.
Actually, speaking of selling, the album did
reach No. 31 on the UK charts — their highest position ever, signifying that
the change in style did appeal to the masses to a certain degree. They would
quickly rectify this mistake with the follow-up, but whether they were rooting
for the money or not, the decision to make a dash for the trendy dance scene of
1983 was clearly conscious, and at least it did not result in them making yet
another carbon copy of Red Mecca — even
if I cannot say that the new results were any more exciting.
Note also that most of the recent CD editions
come with an attached bonus EP, called Doublevision
— featuring a studio version of ʻDiskonoʼ and three other tracks that, in stark
contrast to this album, are more of a noise-ambient nature (including one
called ʻMoscowʼ, with resonating church bells as a distinctive feature — other
than that, it seems to represent a post-nuclear war Moscow, which, come to
think of it, would be quite an appropriate evil fantasy for 1983). Again,
nothing too special, but curious to have as such an ardent counterpoint to the
cold dance rhythms of The Crackdown
proper.
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