Cabaret Voltaire

Cabaret Voltaire formed in Sheffield in 1973, when Chris Watson and Richard H. Kirk began building oscillators and splicing tape loops in a flat, and Stephen Mallinder arrived with a bass and a voice to put on top. They took their name from the Zurich club where Dada started, and they meant it: early appearances involved driving around the city playing tape loops out the back of a van, and the first proper show, at Sheffield Students Union in May 1975, ended in a brawl. Across two decades the sound moved from noise collage and clanging post-punk into synthpop, electro, house and techno, on records like Mix-Up, Red Mecca and The Crackdown, most of them cut at the band's own Western Works studio, which also hosted sessions for The Human League and Clock DVA. Kirk carried the name on as a solo project until his death in 2021. In 2025 Mallinder and Watson reconstructed the live set from scratch on the original equipment for a 50th anniversary tour, recorded for the 2026 live album But What Time Is It Really?