Cabaret Voltaire - Code (1986)

I've just had a look for my Don't Argue 12", it being the last Cabaret Voltaire record I ever bought new as it turned up in the racks. I was hoping to compare notes because I recall it being fairly rubbish with soulful backing vocals in the spirit of Go West, Johnny Hates Jazz and all the other useless pop wankers of the day. It seemed like Cabaret Voltaire's equivalent of Bowie's Let's Dance 12", not much more than a slightly smelly appendix to an impressive but suddenly finite catalogue indicating that the game was up and there would be no need to bother with future releases. I was hoping to compare notes because the album version of the same track is pretty decent, being thankfully bereft of some woman wailing no, don't argue with me, you better watch your step, boy - woah yeah and all that. Anyway, I no longer have the 12", so I must have got rid of it due to it being shit. Never mind.

No don't argue with me, you better watch your step, boy - woah yeah was why I didn't buy Code. I picked a couple of later singles out of bargain bins, and if they weren't quite so bad as the aforementioned extended jacket with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows megamix of Don't Argue, neither did they do much to change my mind; and then the boys turned up on the telly in track suits adopting acid house mannerisms of such hilariously opportunistic thrust as to make Altern-8 look like Miles Davis. It was clearly all over.

Au contraire, some bloke on the internet explained to me in seemingly implausible defence of Code; so I bought one because it was cheap on Discogs, and both Bill Nelson and Adrian Sherwood are involved - which has to count for something - and curiosity got the better of me.

I was a relative latecomer to Cabaret Voltaire, discovering them mainly through spurious association with Throbbing Gristle - apparently it was usually the other way round for most people. They have become the eternal second name of the list for tedious wankers taking it upon themselves to bring us the story of industrial music - everything from Ministry to U2 and back again. Disregarding for the moment the fact of the term industrial music being a complete waste of time, I personally think the list has it the wrong way round. Throbbing Gristle were often wonderful, but once you've listened to them a few times the novelty wears off, the shock subsides, and it becomes clear that they only ever really did just the one thing. Cabaret Voltaire's back catalogue on the other hand continues to yield new aspects years after the moment has passed. You can listen to those things over and over and still find unfamiliar and unexpected elements. It sounds like a cliché, but I guess that's because they really were all about the music, man, or at least the sonic experimentation but let's call it music anyway. There's weird and startling, but not much in the way of shock effect, and no boggle-eyed interviews banging on about how the Third Reich were really, really interesting.

So here we are, and much to my embarrassment, Code turns out to be pretty damn great. It's clearly something that wouldn't have scared the living shit out of fans of Go West, and doubtless some Parlaphone marketing drone had his fingers crossed for that very reason, but it still sounds like Cabaret Voltaire. Adrian Sherwood's ruthless application of precision sampling and all those hard gated snares works well given that Tackhead records of the time probably weren't a million miles from mid-period Cabaret Voltaire, in spirit and approach if not actual sound. Still we have those elusive sequencers pinging away in the background in approximation of the treated guitar parts on earlier records, and it never quite adds up to a tune or even songs so much as a groove. There's always been a dance element to our music is almost always bullshit, but it applies here when you consider that the influence of dub, James Brown and even Parliament could be heard at least as far back as The Voice of America, certainly more so than anything of more obviously Caucasian thrust.

I had assumed Code to be the sell-out album, probably because I read as much somewhere or other, but it really isn't. The grooves are possibly harder than before, but they aren't doing anything they hadn't already been doing at least since Rough Trade. On the other hand, I had a listen to Groovy, Laidback and Nasty - the one which came after - on YouTube, and the cunt sounds like eight variations on Take That's Relight My Fire, so I think I'll leave it there for a while.

The Jesus & Mary Chain - Psychocandy (1985)

Returning to the individual who once told me that New Musical Express was an anagram of Manchester Evening Post, during a more recent phone call we were discussing some record or other in terms which led him to reveal how his girlfriend had told him, 'that's so typical of you - preferring the song that's on the b-side.' I can't even remember what the subject was, but it came across as my friend congratulating himself for being always ahead of the curve, thinking outside of the box, taking the road less travelled and so on. It was as though he'd thrown on a beret, tapped the shades a little way down the bridge of his nose and cast me a look to say, you know, the thing I really dig about Miles...

This was hardly the first time, and this mannered, self-conscious edginess is clearly something which still matters to him. He just has to be stood at the window as you enter the room, affecting surprise as he is discovered studying the sleeve of the record now playing. Oh hi - I was just checking out some Basset Hound Fudgecicle - what do you think of their new album? - knowing full well you've never heard of the cunts. It goes all the way back to when we were at school, meeting Steve Harris crying with laughter because he'd just come from the house of our mutual friend, and our mutual friend had been wearing his mod suit.

'You could shave with the creases in his trousers,' Steve howled, even though I don't think any of us had started shaving at that point.

At the time I was myself no stranger to musical obscurities, having acquired quite a fanzine habit, but the difference between us was - so I hoped - that my discoveries weren't the most cock obvious shite that fucking everyone was listening to because it had been all over the NME for the past three months, and I couldn't have given a shit about being seen listening to it at an interesting angle, my treasured Matfield & the Pond cassette casually positioned on the coffee table in the movie set of my fascinating life.

The Sisters of Mercy were pretty big for those months during which the lad took to wearing black clothes and an array of beads. I discovered said Sisters about ten years later by accident, having long suspected they wouldn't be my sort of thing at all - quite wrongly as it turned out. The Sisters of Mercy were soon usurped by the Jesus and Mary Chain as my acquaintance revealed how he'd never liked the Sisters of Mercy, and in fact he wasn't even sure whether he'd ever heard anything by them. So this was one aspect of what I already disliked about the Jesus and Mary Chain, namely their stupid fucking fans.

I always hated that whole Creation Records thing of which the Jesus and Mary Chain were a significant part. It seemed like the return of some of the worst aspects of rock, not least the rock star as some guy in black leather trousers enjoying a series of blow jobs and expecting you to be impressed. It was a confession that punk and that which came after had all been a bit embarrassing, but now it was safe to listen to the Rolling Stones again. It was safe to go on about just how amaaaaaaazing the sixties had been even if you'd only been five at the time. It was safe to pepper your speech with words like gear, cat, fab, and dig and to know that you were amongst friends who would neither laugh at you nor call you names. It felt sort of like a betrayal, although of what I'm not entirely sure, but a betrayal nevertheless - a backtracking, a cop-out, a return to statements of the bleeding obvious made in the knowledge that the bestselling brand was really just what everyone had wanted all along.

Anyway, I'd seen Whitehouse live - which was quite an experience, although not necessarily a good one - and here were this new band who similarly played in front of a wall of feedback. Naturally I was curious, and my friend - the one who had never liked the Sisters of Mercy - sold me a copy of Upside Down, the record everyone was talking about. He had two because he'd bought a copy and then it was reissued with a picture sleeve, which he had to have. The pounding drums sounded pretty good, but otherwise it felt like some badly recorded sixties record, the Beach Boys played too fast on a shitty radio in the next room. It was okay, just nothing startling. It seemed like it was attempting to evoke the experience of stumbling around half-pissed with your hair in your eyes, just noise and distortion and adrenaline. The Ramones had already done it and were still at that time engaged in doing it about a million times better so far as I was concerned.

Then I surprised even myself by buying this album, most likely because there was nothing else in the shop which I wanted at the time, and also because I wanted to feel like I was in touch with what was happening and going down, or at least like I wasn't missing out. I played it a load, but now I can only hear these fourteen not-quite-songs filtered through subsequent interviews with the Reid brothers telling everyone how great they were, how hard they worked to produce such classic material, and how nothing was ever the same again after this record. As Velvet Underground tribute acts go, it has some decent tunes - mostly variations on the same one: E then B... Joy Division Joy Division Joy Division, E then B again and maybe A in there somewhere, mumble mumble, attempted American accent, candy, drugs reference, candy - that most commonly used of Scottish words - moan moan, pound pound, something that sounds a bit like Good Vibrations played backwards and end at just under two minutes. Job done.

Pardon Me.

As I was saying, decent tunes but it's really just a collage of every record the Reid brothers ever liked enough to stick on the pub jukebox, or every record the Reid brothers ever liked enough to make sure you discover them listening to it - Oh hi - we were just checking out some Big Star - what do you think of their third album?; and it does the same unremarkable thing over and over for about forty minutes, and this was the one that somehow changed everything. It makes Status Quo sound like fucking Schoenberg.

Psychocandy my arse.