Track-By-Track: O/B #21
Groovy, Laidback and Nasty – the album before Body And Soul – was received with some consternation by fans of Cabaret Voltaire's 1980s output, and I have to say I'm not much of a fan either. The move to poppy acid house would just about make sense if the tunes retained some of the mystery and sex of their earlier output (present and correct, incidentally, on Richard H Kirk's bleep side-projects Sweet Exorcist and XON). Instead we find insipid takes on trip hop and chicago and new york house, that can't be saved even by collaborations with Marshall Jefferson and Paris Brightledge. Not saved, no, but surely forgiven, thanks to the B-sides on the Easy Life single: 'Fluid' ranks as one of Kirk's all-time great dance tracks, while 'Positive ID' foreshadowed the best of what would appear on Body And Soul a year later.
I was first introduced to Body And Soul through hearing Roger 23 play 'Vibration' on his Discipline mix (sadly no longer online), and its sound pulls the best of those Warp outings and B-sides: bleep's metallic edges there but dulled slightly safer use, the bassline rubbery rather than heavy, harmonies that are leftfield but not dissonant, all packaged up into a pop structure. 'What Is Real' – the album version – is the other winner for me, finding a skeletal funk in the interplay between percussion and pitchbent synths. Thankfully, for his nonsensical vocals Stephen Mallinder eschews the singing he'd attempted on GL&N, opting instead for a storytelling delivery that gels perfectly with the haunted house vibe.
Steer clear of the single version of 'What Is Real' unless you really go for that high dissonance that for me is the scourge of so many promising bleep records.
Cabaret Voltaire - What Is Real (Les Disques Du Crépuscule, 1991)
(Discogs)
Note: this is an entry in the Track-By-Track series for my mix for O/B.
Track-By-Track is a series that looks back at records you will have heard in my mixes, one by one in the order they were played. Who made them, and when? How did I come across them? And what do they make me feel?