Cabaret Voltaire – 1974 - 1976

Essential for any Cabaret Voltaire fan. Early and formative works that are on the experimental side but still have structure. These recordings were made in a 10x6 foot attic on a reel to reel. Does it get any better than that?? Great to imagine that visual while listening. 2XLP on transparent orange vinyl. Gatefold cover with printed inner sleeves and a double sided insert documenting other CV releases on Mute. Excellent sound quality, vinyl plays clean, no pressing issues or defects. Someone complained about the artwork but I actually like it—suits the vibe of the record. This is the only version released on vinyl. This will definitely go up in price. Snatch one while you can. Copies in the U.S. are already becoming sparse.

One of those obscure albums from the group, this has been mostly forgotten to time and predates later industrial and harsh noise bands which followed the 70s and 80s. It's one of those experimental albums which provides a steady dose of tension and fear to the listener, and this is entirely done by cut-up tape techniques mixed with improvised instrumentation.

It's like the soundtrack to a silent hill game or a psychological horror film, it's not really music in the sense that it has melody, but is instead music in the sense that it's the background to what you perceive and imagine in front of you. Like any musique concrete album, the album attempts to draw listeners in through manipulated sounds, washy drum machines, and the occasional distorted voice and synthesizer droning in the background- In fact, alot of the album is essentially just the band messing around with random sounds and tape recorders with some effect units mixed in.

In the past, this album was seen as a harsh response to the fast-growing punk scene, which by many industrial acts was more closely aligned to the performance art scene of the 1970s (COUM transmissions)- After all, the Cabs were considered a "post-punk" band in some respects, whether that name is accurate or not is another question for another day. Nowadays, I believe it has lost most of that historical value as society has moved on and views the punk movement through a more mainstream lens (bands like Throbbing Gristle were considered punk bands in their heyday but are now recognized as the forerunners of the Industrial Music scene). So these days, this album is essentially just post-modernist music because of how it manages to communicate satire and unconventional music norms.

Anyways, you're probably not even interested in this review and just want to know how to find a physical copy of this which isn't a streaming version. The original cassette versions are virtually impossible to find due to most cassettes from IRC being recorded amateurishly in low numbers, so good luck on that end. However, It has been reissued on CD since the 90s (and is quite easy to find) and has even gotten a decent vinyl re-issue. Only problem being that it's spread across 2 disks. A Must buy for a fairly cheap price, imo.

Cool that it got reissues, but wtf did they do to the art

Sounds excellent. Clean and crisp. A must get for lovers of Cabaret Voltaire.

Throughout the years, Cabaret Voltaire keep coming back with box-set releases retrieving bits long kept in a shoe box, the closest one to "1974-76" being "Methodology", but this collection still stands out as the most genuine of them all, gathering such rough experiments for an official release back in 1978, when the group were just starting to witness proper vinyl exposure (with "A Factory Sample" and their own "Extended Play"). Of course, Cabaret Voltaire had a number of phases throughout their career, and depending on your personal choice, "1974-1976" is either something crafted well ahead of its time (which it definitely is) or it is plain sporting fun better left alone "there and then".

Well, Eno came with "Before and after science" in 1977, so try consider "1974-1976" its downright middle - the ear-splitting, menacing sound of tomorrow that is at times, yes, even catchy... mercilessly predicting a number of adventures in modern music to come. "The Dada Man" to start with, could it be the first-ever true piece of hip-hop? Although the dadaist approach might defeat them in of originality, Cabaret Voltaire demonstrate spontaneity and honesty in their deconstructive process. Super humourous as it is disturbing - in total, "1974 - 1976" is a pretty consistent collection of nightmarish experiments that never make you sit down and yawn but go through the whole thing to the anticipating level of "what's next".

Do a tiny test: put on your headphones, take a walk through town, play it loud enough (but be gentle, there's a lot here that might affect your hearing!) and watch people around you ing by, raising their eyebrows irritated by what's coming out of those headphones of yours... That is to prove the sheer power of this "music". It captures. Literally. To great effect.

An essential if you enjoy true early industrial music. For those who came to the The Cabs as fans of their more danceable recordings, this might not be the one for you. I suppose you could dance to it, but you might get hurt.

I like to spin this album up when I need to get work done. The Cabs had a way of putting sound together to create an all encoming atmosphere. Like a big noisy blanket that wraps me up in a state of perfect mental focus. 1974-1976 and Methodology are two of their finest in this regard.

When you aren't interested in getting work done, get on a crowded freeway at high speed with all the windows down and the volume cranked. The whole "industrial" sound reaches perfection. It's the original trance music.

Important as a historical artifact, no doubt, but there is a lot of noodling and experimentation. It sounds like CV were recording things just to see what they sounded like when they played the tape back.

A dirge of a listen, a very slow moving electronic throb that pre-dates a lot of noise acts that have sprung up over the years. Definitely has its place but it's not really focused, it's pretty messy and full of tape hiss and in the end it kind of fades into the background of your mind as it's playing. Still, good to spin every now and then.

1974? that far back? Despite the fact that such people as VELVET UNDERGROUND, CAN, COUM TRANSMISSIONS & others existed out there, your average listener was still being plagued by such musical wonders as BAY CITY ROLLERS, GILBERT O'SULLIVAN & worst of all LITTLE JIMMY OSMOND. No wonder those first victims of CABARET VOLTAIRE's wicked sense of humour reacted in such shock when, sat in a Sheffield pub having a quiet drink, their idyll is shattered by three youths playing ear-twisting loop tapes at them. No matter what you think of them now, or even from the Punk era, I feel this shows pure DADA humour, and any chance to hear what these poor victims experienced must be taken in both hands. Well, here's your chance.
This album is already very familiar to me - I bought it, way back in the early Eighties, along with the RICHARD H. KIRK album, and "White Souls In Black Suits", all on the collectable INDUSTRIAL label, on a trip to Birmingham. Now on CD I have to say it sounds better - surprisingly high quality, considering the age & relative low-tech equipment used, and heard through headphones of a DISCMAN, you can once again experience a little of that early culture shock.

It clocks up the first eight & a half minutes or so with "The Dada Man", fading in on mellow percussive sounds, it's an uneasy blend of frequency/tempo changing drum machine, fast-forward tape, both subtle and dense effects, sudden shocking sounds and wild, unfettered electronics which take off on the crest of echoes. "Ooraseal" is a little more laid back, yet no less disturbing - dissociated voices, both discernable and distorted, speaking Dada prose & chanting phonetic poetry, blend with a bizarre rhythm made of electronics and treated sound. "A Sunday Night In Biot" is an easier piece, swathed in gliding keyboard washes, occasionally ed by stark, ear-grating sounds, disconnected wind instruments, and almost flatulant noises while the vocalist tries several styles, some quite unnerving. "In Quest Of The Unusual" glides in on uneasy synth sounds and a broken, distorted rhythmic backdrop, like distant trains heard at night, the sound waves shattered by buildings between, "Do The Snake" rises up on hissing echo. Despite showing naivete on the CABS' behalf, suggesting they were in their early teens when they recorded it, it acts as a precursor to much later VOLTAIRE recordings, say "Microphonies" or "The Crackdown", with some obvious JAMES BROWN catchphrases ('Get Down'). They retain their humour throughout, which thankfully saves them from too much self-indulgence. "Fade Crisis" slowly fades in on it's tail, a delicate, subtle piece with chilling synth use which rises like a horn fanfare over a gradually changing electronic rhythm. "Doubled Delivery" is a dense and broken piece similar to the "Mussolini Headkick" era, although as mentioned, a good deal more rough around the edges. "Venusian Animals" is a slow moving, drifting piece of music with grating distortion and distant animal-like howls, a drum machine rhythm set so far back it's almost absent and an overall unnerving effect, "The Outer Limits" is a gradually rnetamorphosizing piece based, I suspect, around a decent delay line, although it's probably too early for DDL. It reminds me a little of DOME or perhaps something from the second side of "The Bridge" - good stuff, and probably my favourite track on the entire album, "She Loved You" - hmm.. , I can drifting off to sleep one night thinking 'hey! a CABARET VOLTAIRE BEATLES cover version'. Listening to it now, I can tell it's at least based on the original, although it's musically closer to "Hamburger Lady" - heartbeat bass drum, depressive falling synth sounds, massed, threatening noise, whispered voice.

This is not an easy album to listen to, but it is more than a mere historical document. Not only can you witness where the current HOUSE group came from, but also lose yourself in strange, alien, nerve-jangling soundscapes.

Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.

Definitively odd though they may have been, this is left field even for Cabaret Voltaire. Eerie, prolonged soundscapes, tripped-out musique concrète, and demented proto-rock experiments comprise this collection, many similar in sonic texture, characterised by tape machine graininess and strange noise; Sometimes these sounds are quite disturbing, as on the surreal, unsettling "Venusian Animals" and the Beatles deconstruction "She Loved You".

Other times the music simply broods, or goes utterly mad, a great example being the Throbbing Gristle-esque spoken word "A Sunday Afternoon in Biot", which predates "Very Friendly" by a year. Occasionally, the music is light-hearted, even goofy, such as "Oorseal" with its backwards-sounding catchphrase, or the brilliantly gratuitous dance parody "Do the Snake", with all three ing in on the vocal fun.

Also notable is the opener, "The Dada Man", a found-sound jumble which sounds surprisingly hi-fi, although it may well be the oldest piece here.