Customer Reviews

Mix-Up

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

 

 

If you're even looking at the Cabaret Voltaire offerings [on the site], for whatever reason (Fischerspooner got compared to them, you were researching the dada movement, customers who bought Nine Inch Nails also bought this CD, et alia), you need this CD in your collection. These boys were the genesis of the sound that legions of followers would mutate into a myriad of directions that you know and love -- techno, industrial, breakbeat, goth -- and this album will take you to amazing places. Play it in the dark, or set your television between channels and watch the static with "Mix-Up" in the background. Have kinky jaded ... and put this on repeat on your CD player. Paint your windows and appliances matte black or sickly green and blare this as your soundtrack.

Given 4 stars only because this band would surpass this effort with "Red Mecca". You should have that one too, but one step at a time if you're not among the industrial Illuminati.

Mix Up is one of my favourite Cabaret Voltaire releases, and there is no doubt that it is an industrial record in the vein of Throbbing Gristle. However, unlike Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire did not focus as much in unrecognisable noise and strange tapeloops as they did on playing their own weird breed of industrial: distorted guitar lines on the background, constant basslines, early rythm boxes gone insane and scary vocals. The atmosphere they bring up is really cool, and dark, on this album. An early industrial classic - recommended.

Cabaret Voltaire's Mix Up, was one of the most inspirational music I found at the time. Once I heard this, it opened up the love for 'the other side of music'. The choreography of sounds and rhythms creating a view of its own. Yes, like a soundtrack. The distorted sounds in the music gives it a rough edge, but beauty is certainly there aswell. To me it was the most inspiring music to start Super 8 filming at the time. Once I put on this Mix Up and Voice of America, the images bubbled up, and has been put on film (later used together with other experimental/industrial bands and was a start off for me working with modern dance choreographers). This music is so strong, that you will be in a Cabaret Voltaire mood for a while...at least for the day. Since music from the 80's is still a hobby and a life-style to me, Cabaret Voltaire is still looking after me. They made such great records in the early 80's that I can recommend the newbies to start just here, and...please get the groove and the images of Cabaret Voltaire! It is also a perfect soundtrack for any mute tv-series or film on tv. Just put the record on and the sound from tv low or off...and you automatically start to wonder what the actors are actually on about. It all starts to look so cynically hilarious from the soundtrack point of view, that you never stop wondering about it. I shared this and 'entertained' a few friends of mine this way, it becoming great steamy evenings. Have it your way though ! But it IS a five star record, it 100% is !! Make it worthwhile.

'Mix Up' was the Cabs' full-length debut, and to me it suggests that they were still in the process of condensing their Dada performance art and musical experiments into a cohesive sound. There is a wide variety of ideas, but it lacks the musical and conceptual unity of their classic albums such as 'Red Mecca' and 'The Crackdown'. The album is also considerably darker and less accessible than even 'Voice Of America', making it a very challenging and demanding listen. Casual fans who jumped on board with 'The Crackdown' and expecting another dance masterpiece are advised to steer well clear; this one is for die-hard fans only.

This is real old-school industrial music. Stephen Mallinder doesn't so much sing as spit out angry words that can be sampled, chopped up, and thrown back together at random. And Chris Watson and Richard Kirk kick up one hell of a disturbing racket behind him; sheets of processed guitar, dirty distortion, white noise, droning keyboards, primitive drum machines and loops, and out-of-nowhere samples. With the exception of a brilliant cover of 'No Escape' there's not much here that even resembles a conventional song.

For me, 'No Escape' and 'On Every Other Street' are the two real highlights of the album. Those apart, there's an awful lot that's interesting here; the dark dubscape of 'Fourth Shot', the wheezy steam-engine pulse of 'Kirlian Photograph', the oscillating drone of 'Heaven and Hell', the spoken-word voiceover of 'Photophobia'. But "interesting" doesn't always equal good, and while there's no doubting the Cabs' ambition, they would do a much better job of pulling their diverse influences and ideas together on subsequent albums.

I still recommend die-hard Cabs' and industrial music fans pick this one up, for completeness' sake if nothing else.

There are very few things I know about Voltaire: a philosopher, great liberal social reformer, and a big buddy of Montesquieu.
That's about it.
Quite where that leaves us as far as 'Mix-Up' is concerned, I'm really not sure.

Industrial Sheffield, part of the grim North of England (indisputable no 1 - Cabaret Voltaire cannot come from London); much rain, unemployment, grim humour, Sean Bean and despair. A fabulously fertile breeding site for a music (irrefutable no 2 - Cabaret Voltaire are not a pop music entity) such as 'Mix-Up'.
Smog seeps from the cd case when you open it. Some-one speaks, steel, knives...

The first I heard from Cabaret Voltaire was 'Baader-Meinhoff' around the reign of Queen Victoria (disputable no 3 - Q V never went to Sheffield) and it had an effect along the same lines as 'Transmission' or 'Porno-Base'.
A loosening of brain cells to an accordance; a way of thinking which is easy to calmly analyse now - but when you're a boy...
You leave the lights on.

Yet again all experimental roads lead to 23 Skidoo and the monolithic 'Seven Songs' (hopeful no 4 - 'Seven Songs': I will cease to be obsessed by it), and although 'Mix-Up' is less of a party, they share kinship in the most observable way. Art school pseudo-punk white noise, discordantly sieved through Can and Suicide, and the results seized on by self-satisfied, university educated, middle-class music journalists, and projected.

'Kirlian Photograph' opens 'Mix-Up' and leads the way for the accompanying 'Eyeless Sight,' 'Photograph' and 'Capsules' as the album's central spine (grateful no 5 - that the titles give so much of the album away and saves the reviewer words).

This is one of a number of Cabaret Voltaire albums (indispensable no 6 -'Voice of America') which any great sensible will buy immediately and quizzically imbibe to oblivion.

Voltaire probably enjoyed the classics, but I don't know what he'd make of damp Sheffield and a group of 'musicians' who distrust the very fundamental concepts of melody and cohesion.