Cabaret Voltaire, Gestalt Corps, Bedford Boys' Club, 18th August 1984.


A balmy midsummer night in West London, just a dreadlocks’ length from the Frontline on All Saints Road. I’m lying on the floor in the control room at Sarm West, staring out into the midnight blue murk beyond the glass, picking out the angular shapes of studio baffles, idle flight cases and bits of drum kit sleeping in the large live recording room. Producer Trevor Horn owns the studio; this is where he has been shaping the forthcoming Frankie Goes To Hollywood album. Come December, everyone with a telly will have seen inside Sarm West, as this will be the location for the video for Band Aid’s ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’. Tonight, however, it’s just Mal and Richard from Cabaret Voltaire, their engineer/producer Mark Ellis - known to all as ‘Flood’ - and me.

Sarm West Studios. Photo courtesy of the Rockland70 blog. (Taken some years later...)

Ever generous with their time, Mal and Richard have invited me down from Sheffield to have a listen to work-in-progress on their forthcoming album, to which I’ve been fortunate enough to contribute some guest drums and percussion. The recording process complete, the guys are at the mixing stage. Adjusting and readjusting the levels of all the instruments until they match, as near as is possible, the sound painting they have visualised in their imaginations.

We’re on the night shift. Studio time is cheaper in the small hours. Flood is piloting the mixing desk, the Christmas-like LED lights dancing green and red in the fuggy umbra as, close-by, the many stacked racks of outboard gear glimmer, flicker and pulse in their own peculiar languages. He’s flanked on either side by Mal and Richard, both listening intently, making suggestions. The current track, with the working title ‘Digital Rasta’, dominates the space in the room. It’s pounding electronic drums defibrillating my chest cavity every four beats to the bar. There’s no escape, and I’m more than happy to surrender to the mighty sound.

Once owned by Island Records, this building was known then as Basing Street Studios. The world’s most famous Rasta, Bob Marley lived here while recording ‘Exodus’. As the Cabs’ track thunders away, I try to picture Bob out in the live room, jamming with some of the other famous ghosts who’ve laid down a groove here: John Bonham, Paul Kossoff and the sensational Alex Harvey. If these walls could talk, well, to be honest they’d probably ask for a spliff, a swig or a hit; but then they might ask, “What’s this you’re listening to? It sounds different, sounds good.”

You will always find us in the kitchen at parties. Me, Mal and Richard. Hillsborough, Christmas 1983. Photo by Karen Howarth.

I did my drums session earlier in the year at Cabaret Voltaire’s Western Works studio in Sheffield. I was thrilled to be asked, and to be honest, a little bit relieved. At least four other local drummers I knew - Haydn, Nik, Al and Nort - had gotten the call ahead of me on various CV sessions over the years. Always the bridesmaid and all that.

In fairness to Richard and Mal, much of the discipline required to play live drums with them involves being able to stay in perfect time with the pre-programmed elements of their unique electronic sound. As a drummer, my relationship with timekeeping is as on/off as the love affair between Richard Burton and Liz Taylor. When it’s good, it’s glorious. When it’s bad, the only drumsticks I should be trusted with are from Kentucky Fried Chicken. Over the course of a couple of days, we managed to get down a crisp break-beat pattern for a track called ‘Cut The Damn Camera’ and a very simple but sturdy 4/4-time pattern for another new one called ‘Spies In The Wire’. A lick I’ve nicked from ‘Car Wash’ by Rose Royce forms the basis for a funky track with the working title of ‘James Brown’, and I added a bit of tambourine to an epic, atmospheric track called ‘Blue Heat’.

Less successful was an attempt to graft an ambitious 12/8-time beat to a fabulous, cinematic synth riff known as ‘Theme From Earthshaker’. Like a floppy rubber sole stuck to a biker boot with chewing gum, it keeps coming unglued after a few steps. In the end, we just recorded some solo floor tom hits in the stairwell outside the studio, a space which has a magnificent natural reverberation off the old stone walls.

"Acid Do Not Stack" Richard and Mal shot by Steve Pyke for Sounds magazine in early 1984.

In between working on the new album, Cabaret Voltaire continued their somewhat flexible approach to live concerts. July saw them play a handful of shows in Spain, a chance to build on Iberian interest created by the nationally televised concert broadcast there in November 1983. A bonus to these five shows, with their good friends in New Order, was a chance to hang out, have fun, catch some rays and get paid for it. Well, why wouldn’t you?

In August, back in the UK, they put together a short tour to road-test some new material and introduce a new live band member, percussionist Mark Tattersall. And while no-one is ever going to mistake them for Motörhead, four gigs in six days is, by CV standards, a busy schedule. One which will see them play shows in Bedford, Birmingham, Derby and Bournemouth.

They last played Bedford in July 1983. The gig was put on by a local fan-turned-promoter Dec Hickey. When I was a kid, the BBC used to put on a TV show during the school holidays called ‘Why don't you just switch off your television set and go and do something less boring instead?’ The idea being, it’s summer time, get outside and create something. I don’t know if Dec watched it, but it was that spirit - there’s nothing happening here, so let’s make something happen - that informed his inspired initiative to bring interesting, left-of-centre live music to sleepy Bedford. Starting with The Teardrop Explodes in 1980, The Boys’ Club has since played host to the likes of The Fall, Eyeless In Gaza and Section 25. When it’s not a hub for fans of John Peel and The Tube, the sixties-built building is the Bedfordshire base for local youth groups and devotees of the sweet science of boxing.

Another early visitor to the Boys’ Club were New Order, who played here in 1981. Barney from the band had introduced Richard from the Cabs to Dec at a Sheffield New Order gig at the end of that year, and his campaign to bring CV to Bedford had started then. When you are in a band, if you are well looked after by a local promoter - paid on time, proper rider, decent PA and an actual audience watching you play - you tend to remember them when touring time comes around again. So it is that Cabaret Voltaire return to Bedford a year and a month after their first visit.

By a happy coincidence, my new girlfriend Terri, a vivacious nurse from nearby Luton, moves in the same alternative music circle as Dec and his Bedford gang. Thus I find myself drinking cans with a group of new people I don’t know well, but who all appear to be sound, good company, lying on the grass at a rugby club near the venue on a scorching summer afternoon. New girlfriend, new job and our band The Box have a new album out. Things are looking up.

My time on the picket line in Sheffield, just a few months ago, already feels like a distant place. It’s two months to the day since the Battle of Orgreave, when striking miners clashed violently with South Yorkshire Police. And while the strike is still being widely supported in local communities with the most to lose from pit closures, it isn’t on the news every day now.

There must be five hundred people crammed into the venue when we finally drink up and wander over. The pop-up bar is doing a roaring trade in cold beers. I spot Box bandmate Pete Hope, who is driving for Mal and Richard, videographer Pete Care and a few other Sheffield faces. Drummer Al Fish, who I know from Hula and the Cabs, is here tonight with his new band, Gestalt Corps. Also in the line-up are Rod from I’m So Hollow, Tim from Naked Pygmy Voles and a smashing lad called Paul Wheatcroft on vocals. Okay, maybe not quite as stellar a line-up as say, Blind Faith, but something of a super-group by Sheffield standards nonetheless. After this gig, the guys will change the name from Gestalt Corps to Workforce, which is a better reflection of the itchy, het-up industrial rock-funk they rigorously apply themselves to. As well as being easier to spell.

As is their preference, Cabaret Voltaire have brought in Dian Barton from Oz P.A. Hire to take responsibility for their live sound. She also does front-of-house for New Order. When I see the size of the rig they’ve brought into this small room, I wonder if they maybe took a wrong turn on the M1 at Newport Pagnell. Surely this many speaker cabinets was meant to be delivered to the massive outdoor bowl sixteen miles down the road at Milton Keynes? But no, like brutalist tower blocks crammed into a scout hut, it might look excessive, but the sound tonight is rich, rounded, pin-sharp and very, very loud. Those defibrillations, familiar from the mixing studio, are shocking my solar plexus again.

I know Mark Tattersall from around the Sheffield pubs and University bars. A Japanese Studies graduate last year, he’s elected to stay in Sheffield playing in bands to see what happens. Most recently in the building-a-good-local-following Chakk, he’s also played with Vendino Pact, Sexual Lotion and Bedroom Athletes. Mark is a lovely bloke, a witty and charming conversationalist. Like me, he got the invitation to play with the Cabs over pints in The Beehive pub one night, and was utterly thrilled to be asked.

The last time I saw the Cabs live was at Sheffield University in November. This was the famous CV-TV multimedia experience, with tall banks of televisions stacked up on stage, linked to VHS players feeding bizarre, mysterious and sometimes just plain disturbing footage. This was then interspersed with a live video feed of the band, and further film projections shown on additional screens around the stage.

There’s none of that tonight. With no new record to promote, the pressure is off, and they are free to experiment with new material in front of an open-minded audience that’s here to listen. Maybe because of this, this turns out to be one of my favourite Cabaret Voltaire gigs.

I’ve bought a couple of 12” singles recently in the emerging musical genre known as Electro. ‘Planet Rock’ by Afrika Bambaataa from Roulette Records just off Sheffield High Street and ‘Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)’ by Hashim from that hotbed of cutting edge dance music G.T. News in Hillsborough. There are also a couple of proper hit records in this new style - ‘I.O.U.’ by Freeez and ‘Rockit’ by Herbie Hancock. While I quite like this hard, bright digital music, I wouldn’t listen to it as often as I’d play and enjoy the new records by The Psychedelic Furs or Lou Reed. However, Mal and Richard, who last year had the doors blown off their 1982 track ‘Yashar’ by NYC Electro-producer John Robie’s exciting and innovative dance club remix, are immersing themselves deeper in this new, propulsive, relentless music.

This being Cabaret Voltaire, when the night club mirrorball starts to spin, it’s gonna throw some nasty flecks of swarf in your eye. After a session in The Beehive we’ll occasionally end up back at Western Works to watch a VHS. I’m very, very squeamish when it comes to horror, so on those uncomfortable nights when the video pick is ‘The Evil Dead’ or, worse still, ‘The Living Dead At Manchester Morgue’ I’ll either studiously avoid the TV while studying the NME or just make my excuses and leave. Another night it could be ‘Caligula’, sniggering away at distinguished English thespians unaware that their actorly gravitas has been somewhat undermined by the addition of some hardcore sex scenes edited in afterwards.

Mal and Richard at Western Works, Autumn 1984. Photographed by Derek Ridgers for the NME.

But the three others I particularly remember are Al Pacino in ‘Cruising’, set in the gay bars of New York City. The violent, gang-warfare thriller ‘The Warriors’ and Kurt “The name’s Plissken!” Russell in the unbeatable science fiction adventure ‘Escape From New York’. The five boroughs of The Big Apple are the location for all three films, and while the music on the soundtracks for ‘Cruising’ and ‘The Warriors’ is largely blue-collar rock, I reckon something of the inherently threatening, grubby, sweaty seediness of these filmic versions of the city feeds into how the Cabs absorb this new American dance music and then present it in their own unique style.

(‘Escape From New York’ director John Carpenter and his own electronic instrument-based scores had been influencing Sheffield bands since The Human League sampled ‘Dark Star’ at the end of ‘Circus Of Death’.)

At Bedford Boys Club, Cabaret Voltaire are at their most paradoxical - unyielding yet elastic, both steely and pliable. Their machines might be programmed, but it’s what they are programmed with - fear, anger, paranoia and bleak premonitions - that gives these dance rhythms their unsettling edge. I recognise ‘Just Fascination’ and ‘Crackdown’ from the last album, pointers now for the band’s next intentions. And I welcome the inclusion of ‘Safety Zone’ from ‘The Dream Ticket’ release, minaret music drifting in on a cloud of desert dust and exotic spices, Little Syria in the midst of a colliding side-walk hustle of kerosene, kerb-crawlers and fiery Evangelists.

A few years ago, they had a track called ‘Taxi Music’ on the ‘Red Mecca’ album. Which to me felt like a passenger snapshot of the city’s hustle and bustle. Now, with newly available electronic music technology like the Fairlight digital synthesizer - and the influence of these fresh American street beats - they are firmly in the driver’s seat and discovering a new world of adventure.

Mal and Mark Tattersall, Bedford Boys Club, 18th August 1984. (Photo courtesy of Martin Devenney)

All the other tracks are new to us, and while I do spot the ‘Digital Rasta’, a flag for peace planted on shifting sand, the overall tempo is pulsating and the accent is on aggression. For his part, Mark Tattersall just looks excited to be a part of it, clattering away on his timbales and conga drums while the Cabs raise Cain. A skittering snap and crackle dancing away on top of the programmed beats. While I don’t think anyone is going to mistake them for Tito Puente at passport control, his distinctly Latin rhythm contribution adds a further dimension to the evolving musical melting pot they are bringing to a boil.

As seen in 'Ferris Bueller's Day Off'. Wish I still had it...

Tipsy, sweaty and deafened, I head back with Terri to her place in the nurse’s quarters at Luton and Dunstable Hospital. Mal, Richard, Mark and the rest of the Sheffield crew head back up the M1. Home to let the leather trousers breathe on the end of the bed for a couple of days before Birmingham beckons.


Thank you to Dec Hickey, Al Fish, Mark Tattersall and Simon Dell.

Special thanks to Mal.

Edited by Nigel Floyd.

Dec has a book about New Order now in print. Link to buy here:https://www.roughtrade.com/en-gb/product/dec-hickey/from-heaven-to-heaven-new-order-live-the-early-years-1981-1984-at-close-quarters

He also does a post-punk podcast. Link here: https://41rooms.com/

I made a Spotify playlist of American Electro tracks released between 1982 and 1984 to give an idea of the new music we were absorbing at the time:

Share this post: