For Cabs collectors and fans of their Industrial Records-era music,this collection is a dream come true. Three CDs of unreleased songs andearly versions are compiled at a surprisingly cheap cost. From theearliest material on the first disc, the sound quality is amazinglyclear. Songs here run the gamut from fully realized tunes to plenty ofhalf-assed noodling. At no point, however, even for the most minimalnoodlings, is it ever dull. This -is- entertainment. (Especially thewalking jazz tune "The Single," where lyrics include "come on kidslet's jive," "come on girls, slide your feet," and plenty of "doo-doodoo-doo"s!) A document like this is evidence that Sheffield's finesthaven't always been depressing anti-establishmentalists. Furthermore,hearing the (then) trio of Kirk, Mallinder and Watson play around withsound effects and layered spoken word bits is actually far moreinteresting on record to hear than a lot of the modern classical soundsof electronic composers that seem to be surfacing by the bucketloadslately. The Cabs clearly had a pop mentality to match their anti-poptendencies and kept songs relatively brief and to-the-point. At somepoint, however, the sound bursts become songs, the instruments becomelearned, the skills become perfected. Sure, there's probably plenty ofattic tapes from many bands' youths floating around, but, by the sax,guitar and keyboard echoes of "Magnet," something really cool is takingplace and we're fortunate to be able to get documentation. It's a lotof material to wade through (53 songs in all) and not all of it isstellar. For a collection which claims to be all previously unreleasedrecordings, the version of "Do the Mussolini (Headkick)" on disc twomysteriously sounds as if it was mastered from a record with clicks andskips. It might have made more sense to include these alternateversions on the recent Original Sound of Sheffieldcomp as things like "No Escape," "Here She Comes Now," and "Nag, Nag,Nag" don't sound much different and appear on numerous releasesalready. I'm also getting sick of the recycled Designers Republicformat for Cab Volt reissue material: the printing in my booklet isdreadful, with bleeding blurry grey text that's next to impossible toread on the greyscale background images—perhaps that's the point, butit's becoming a cheap cop-out. Furthermore, they keep listing web sitesfor Cabaret Voltaire that don't exist yet. This has been a trend sincethe late 1990s that continues to this day. The web site here atBrainwashed has remained the best web resource for all Cabaret Voltairematerial and has not changed its URL since 1996, damnit! It's lame thatthey keep ignoring it for sites that aren't online! Okay, enough of mybitching, enjoy the four hours of great music and hope that things likeChance vs. Causality and other unreleased things are due out soon.Read More
