Our eyeballs got an electric jolt first thing this morning at 4:35 as I woke and checked The Guardian’s home page to begin the day’s doomscrolling. I saw that Chris Watson and Stephen Mallinder were playing their first gig together as Cabaret Voltaire. Cab Volt was a band that I gravitated to enormously as the 80s dawned. I was intrigued by their crunchy mix of art and paranoia, leavened with Funk, as they deconstructed the Control Process over the course of their career.

Once vocalist Stephen Mallinder stopped being a presence on the material with voice and bass, the resultant material became too sterile for me. After 1991, it became largely the work of Richard H. Kirk, until he also abandoned the Cabaret Voltaire mane to leave that legacy behind. It was not until the very end of his life in 2020 that he considered picking up the mantle of CV once more to apply it to music that he felt resided in that zone one final time with the albums “Shadow Of Fear,” “Dekadrone,” and “BN9Drone.” and then Kirk died in 2021. Putting the Cabaret Voltaire name to rest.

But not before having interviews late in his life where he roundly roasted the notion of Cabaret Voltaire ever reforming for a series of valedictory gigs playing their greatest [non] hits! Which makes this event all the more ironically charged. In the interview in The Guardian today, even Stephen Mallinder said that “Richard would probably hate us doing this but it’s done with massive respect. I’m sad he’s not here but there’s such love for the Cabs that I want to give people the opportunity to acknowledge what we did. You can’t deny the music we made is important – and this is a way to celebrate that.”

The big news is that this is the first time that Mallinder has teamed with original member Chris Watson since his decision to leave Cabaret Voltaire in 1981. After which, he left the band to begin working for the BBC as a sound recordist and Field Recorder. His contribution to the world of Field Recordings have placed him at the forefront of the niche scene even as his work for commercial entities like the BBC have seen him earning awards at the BAFTAs.

1981’s “Live At The Lyceum” was the last album with Watson participating, but the next years’ duo formation “2×45″first featured another name who will figure in these upcoming Shows. Eric Random was a Manchester musician working along similar lines who got pulled into the Cabs wake early on and though period of collaboration was brief at the time. he was since crossed creative paths with Stephen Mallinder many times outside of the Cab Volt imprimatur. Having him involved was thoroughly right and proper.

Finally, the last cog in the CV machine will be frequent Mallinder partner Ben ‘Benge’ Edwards. The peripatetic synth wrangler who must sleep as little as Steven Wilson in the last 15 years. He has so many projects and groups beyond his vast solo body of work that it’s a challenge to keep up. It would behoove me to simply collect his entire output since much of it reflects what I would call Cab Volt values to begin with.

According to Mallinder, the quartet have a selection of sixteen songs, from the 1978 “Extended Play” EP through to “Groovy, Laidback, + Nasty.” Watson will also be re-working his “Inside The Circle Of Fire” project that saw him making a sonic portrait of Sheffield that attempted to break from the steel-era clichés of industrial sound that ironically informed CV. Mallinder has quashed all notions of new material recorded under the CV branding, but I really hope that at least this show will be commercially released as it is likely to be quite a re-imagining of the material.

The first date will be during the [what else?] Sensoria Festival at Forge Warehouse in Sheffield is already sold out. The show will be on the 25th of October, but there will be an additional brief series of dates in the UK to follow. From the 17th to the 21st of November. With the first known date being @Gorilla in Manchester on the 18th of November. Tickets for this date go on sale this Friday at 10:00 a.m. and I suppose by then we’ll be able to know where the rest of the dates will be at.

Cabaret Voltaire were very critical to my musical enjoyment. This is the first real “Organ Auction Live Event” in quite some time but I can’t really see traveling to the UK so soon after our last visit in 2024. But I hope that some of my friends and acquaintances on that side of the Atlantic will see fit to attend and to report back with their findings! As the Control Process has become more highly refined and ubiquitous, with surveillance being married to AI with no oversight, and as former Republics and Democracies are hurtling towards Fascism, now more than ever, is the time for the music of Cabaret Voltaire. At least for a final last time.

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