I've been listening to a lot of Cabaret Voltaire since the death of Richard H. Kirk, and because I'm a pedant who becomes physically aroused at the mere thought of things arranged in alphabetical or chronological sequence, I started with 1974-76, working my way through, one album at a time and incorporating the singles so as to get some sort of overview of their progression. Interestingly enough - at least to me - there were a few surprises, not least being that The Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord isn't anything like so great as I remember; and there were even a few revelations - patterns I wouldn't have noticed from listening to an individual record. Most blatant was how little they ever truly owed to rock music, which I state having once regarded Mix-Up as essentially a much weirder take on the Velvet Underground; and conversely how much they owed to black music, James Brown, soul and so on. The influence was never hidden, and was expressed most vividly in Cabaret Voltaire's propensity for extended beat driven jams - grooves rather than songs; but it's easy to get lost in all of the weirdy effects and treated percussion and to lose sight of this element, and of how fundamental it always was to their sound.
Clinker isn't Cabaret Voltaire, but it continues the journey through the presence of one of their number, reaffirming the vision through collaboration with parallel travellers. As with the Wrangler albums, the sound is quite dry, relatively clean compared to Mallinder's previous group, with effects used sparingly, allowing the analogue electronic sound to breath. Julie Campbell's unashamedly funky guitar serves as a perfect complement to the electronics yielding what is essentially a disco record in a reasonably traditional sense but for the absence of backing singers - and by disco I mean that warm sound with the congas and glitterballs, yet remaining awkward and left-field, and without sounding like a retread - imagine Marshall Hain's Dancing in the City stepped up a few beats and with androids as much welcome on the dance floor as anyone else.
It would be unfair to single out Mallinder as uniquely responsible for how great this record is - particularly given the presence of the other two and that the overall sound is much closer to Campbell's Lonelady than to anything of Mal's previous bunch, but for a man with a back catalogue extending into three figures, this may be one of the best things with which he's ever been involved.
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