TECHNOLOGY AND THE PUNK IDEAL
Just over thirty years ago - and with the Punk Movement in full effect - three friends gathered in their rust-worn northern UK hometown, looking more to combat the boredom that was day-to-day life in Sheffield than to change the course of music history.
Challenged at first by their nascent skills as 'players', those friends - Richard H. Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson instead turned their attention to the tools available - namely a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a splicer and a fascination with the 'cut up' techniques advanced in theory by Dadaist art and in practice by William S. Burroughs.
From those early experiments with sampling, the assembling of sounds as loops and an artistic viewpoint very much in line with angst and fury of the punk scene, Cabaret Voltaire would go on to influence virtually every aspect of electronic dance music as we know it today.
Once freed from their limited experience as 'musicians' in the traditional sense, the trio into new ground, pioneering many techniques and technologies that artists in electronica and hip-hop take for granted today. Although there certainly had previously been synthesized music, and even sampling had been done by previously The Beatles, Beach Boys and others, Cabaret Voltaire arguably were the first to build their sound entirely upon the technology available to them, and where it was not available - they developed it.
With the 1981 departure of Watson, Kirk and Mallinder moved from experimental 'noise assaults' toward more traditional song structures and took aim at moving serious electronica to the dance floor. Along the way, they pioneered a swath of electronica, from Industrial, to techno and early house before settling into consistent IDM territory. Many of their sampling techniques directly influenced the early hip-hop scene.
Though never achieving (or necessarily seeking) the commercial success of many of the bands that followed their lead, Cabaret Voltaire maintained their distinctive artistic view and the embrace of technology in the creation of music. In turn, they laid the foundation for what many of us in the electronic and dance music community do today, albeit with a much fuller palate of creative devices.
And, with the technologies available to this generation of artists and producers providing virtually limitless expression to even beginning producers and artists, it's important to recognize the work of those who came before --- and did much of the technical heavy lifting for us.
3kStatic, for example, is a project very much influenced by the work of the Cabs, whose influence is not over only the technical aspects of production (which now include music creation PC and software tools that Kirk, Watson and Mallinder could not have foreseen in the 1970s) but also a world view.
One that - in small way - makes use of applications like ACID, Ableton Live and SONAR (among others) as the new generation of tools for the expression of musical non-conformity. That is, the natural evolution of music creation technology from that old reel-to-reel in Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
Challenged at first by their nascent skills as 'players', those friends - Richard H. Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson instead turned their attention to the tools available - namely a reel-to-reel tape recorder, a splicer and a fascination with the 'cut up' techniques advanced in theory by Dadaist art and in practice by William S. Burroughs.
From those early experiments with sampling, the assembling of sounds as loops and an artistic viewpoint very much in line with angst and fury of the punk scene, Cabaret Voltaire would go on to influence virtually every aspect of electronic dance music as we know it today.
Once freed from their limited experience as 'musicians' in the traditional sense, the trio into new ground, pioneering many techniques and technologies that artists in electronica and hip-hop take for granted today. Although there certainly had previously been synthesized music, and even sampling had been done by previously The Beatles, Beach Boys and others, Cabaret Voltaire arguably were the first to build their sound entirely upon the technology available to them, and where it was not available - they developed it.
With the 1981 departure of Watson, Kirk and Mallinder moved from experimental 'noise assaults' toward more traditional song structures and took aim at moving serious electronica to the dance floor. Along the way, they pioneered a swath of electronica, from Industrial, to techno and early house before settling into consistent IDM territory. Many of their sampling techniques directly influenced the early hip-hop scene.
Though never achieving (or necessarily seeking) the commercial success of many of the bands that followed their lead, Cabaret Voltaire maintained their distinctive artistic view and the embrace of technology in the creation of music. In turn, they laid the foundation for what many of us in the electronic and dance music community do today, albeit with a much fuller palate of creative devices.
And, with the technologies available to this generation of artists and producers providing virtually limitless expression to even beginning producers and artists, it's important to recognize the work of those who came before --- and did much of the technical heavy lifting for us.
3kStatic, for example, is a project very much influenced by the work of the Cabs, whose influence is not over only the technical aspects of production (which now include music creation PC and software tools that Kirk, Watson and Mallinder could not have foreseen in the 1970s) but also a world view.
One that - in small way - makes use of applications like ACID, Ableton Live and SONAR (among others) as the new generation of tools for the expression of musical non-conformity. That is, the natural evolution of music creation technology from that old reel-to-reel in Sheffield, South Yorkshire.
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