Customer Reviews

The Conversation

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I got this cd by mail order a year after it came out, I had no idea what I was getting. This CD is to ambient music what Frampton Comes Alive was to 70s rock, revolutionary. Project 80, an hour long, is an unequaled journey into darkness. Complex, textured, emigmatic, all words that describe this music. Nothing really compares to this cd, in its darkness and complexity. If you like your ambient deep and dark, do yourself a favor and find this cd.

For many fans of dance, ambient, ebm and industrial, they all can find roots in Cabaret's music. Cabaret is defined by their own distinct sound that has no definable sound. Early works were terse, paranoid, brilliant and a challenging listen. The later works moved from Code's cold pop dance to the current Conversation's ambient feel. This album is the last proper one by the duo and its title is clear. It is a conversation between them and you. Take a listen and then progress to their earlier works to experience a band's own musical evolution and appreciate the subtle but profound impact on many of today's music. Dig further and enjoy Richard H. Kirk's solo work including that done under Electronic Eye.

I can only put William Orbit's "Strange Cargo III" in the same league. Here, the duo who, perhaps more than any act other than Can deserve the credit for changing modern music in the electronic age, present their swansong. Extremely different from the "dance" albums of the mid-eighties, this evocative album overwhelms the listener subliminally and overtly. Like so many artists, Cabaret Voltaire do not receive the attention that is given to their far less talented and innovative imitators.

I would place this in my top ten list for favorite albums of all time. It is the last album before Kirk and Mallinder broke up the band to pursue solo projects and it represents the pinnacle of talent for two men who have been creating electronic music since the late 70's. A true masterpiece; exquisitely layered sound.

Cab Voltaire is awesome. This is absolutely the best CD they have put out (In my opinion.) It's a colorful trip into your imagination (a kind of soundtrack for an open mind.) And it contains a track that's 50 minutes long!!!

The grandfathers of industrial music once again show all the others how it should be done. With brilliant integration of noise, beat, and sound, Cabaret Voltaire have compiled another great listening CD.

From the Awesome Exterminating Angel to the Stupendously long Project 80, this is one of the best CD's I have ever listened to. I would definitley recommend listening to this CD when you're Dazed and Confused with Low lighting!

I've long been a fan of both Cabaret Voltaire and Instinct Records, so I was expecting a lot from this album. But after owning it for several years, I still can't get too excited about it. I listen to it once in a while, but it's not a record that I play for friends to check out.

Cabaret Voltaire were undeniably innovators in their heyday, but here they're following the pack instead of leading. There are some nice moments - most notably, the intro track "Exterminating Angel" (and its reprise on Disc 2), and certain passages from the 53-minute ambient piece "Project80" - but most of it is by-the-numbers ambient-electro-house, of the sort that Savvas Ysatis, The Drum Club, and Terre Thaemlitz purveyed in the 1990s. Don't get me wrong - those artists have produced some great ambient work - but the more house-oriented side of that scene has always been a little too generic and polite.

Moreover, this album has none of the rough edges that helped make earlier CV interesting and authentic; it's all very clean and polished. CV are known as musical chameleons, shifting styles from album to album, sometimes radically - and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it's always been their melding of the electronic with the visceral that has made them vital, and here they've abandoned that. In fact, this work is hardly recognizable as CV at all.

If you're a die-hard fan of the 90s chillout techno and early IDM sound, as represented by Instinct Records and Warp's Artificial Intelligence compilations, this might be one for you. Fans of CV's earlier work, though, are likely to be disappointed.