Search - Cabaret Voltaire :: Crackdown

Rich, rhythmic and darkly coloured

Steven Guy | Croydon, South Australia | 11/27/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"At the time, this was Cabaret Voltaire's most coherent manifesto of their musical ideas and styles. It was quite unlike anything which came before it and quite unlike the next Cabaret Voltaire album, Micro-Phonies. "The Crackdown" (the song) and "Just Fascination" were the closest things to singles on this album and both were presented in remixed and lengthened versions. It would have been a brave DJ in the early 1980s who would have played music like this.



Musically, The Crackdown is music more complex and layered (even though is "gooves" in a very agreeable way) than Micro-Phonies, which in turn, is much more stark with its naked beats.



The music of this album is superbly crafted and owes little to anything before it. The Cabs really discovered their own style and they did many interesting things with it.



The lyrics of this album exhibit a black sense of humour and certain degree of poetic cynicism.



Cabaret Voltaire were one of the most important "underground" bands of the last thirty years. Today, we would call this music "Industrial", but this music was created before that term became widely known and accepted. SPK, Test Department and Einsturzende Neubauten touched upon this style, but never with the same degree of precision, creativity and success as Cabaret Voltaire.



If you missed this ensemble the first time around, now is the perfect time to re-examine this music, made by people who were making music above and beyond the dreary old standard guitar/bass guitar/drums combo even in the late 1970s!



If karlheinz Stockhausen had decided to become a Punk/Funk rocker, this is what the result would have been!!!"