The end result of Shadow of Fear for long term CV watchers is a familiar sounding rhythmic stew of electronics, distorted guitars and vocal samples that nag at the nervous system with discomforting insistence.

It was in this sonic lab that Cabaret Voltaire spliced tapes, twiddled knobs and synchronised beats from their early experiments onwards. Much of it comes from Kirk’s back to basics approach that sees him using original analog equipment in the latest incarnation of the band’s Sheffield-based Western Works studio. While the eight tracks on the album couldn’t sound more current as the record moves from the opening Be Free to the fizzing fanfares of What’s Goin’ On, there are ghosts of Cabaret Voltaire past, present and future at play here. Arriving in the thick of the Covid-19 pandemic, the aftermath of the American election and the UK’s looming departure from the EU, the title of the first release of original Cabaret Voltaire material since 1994 is a prescient pointer for the state we’re in. Six years since a now solo Kirk performed under the Cabaret Voltaire name for the first time since 1992, the release of the Shadow of Fear album this month seems to chime dangerously with the times. Taking their name from the Dadaists nightclub in Zurich, over their original twenty year existence, their cut-up sonic constructions fused dub-kosmiche propulsion and fuzzed-up punk garage moved from underground paranoia to clubland mind-melding for the techno age. Here was a band whose mesh of multi-media electronic experiments had been sired in the midst of northern English inner city post-industrial decline. Watson, things seemed to have come full circle. Kirk decided to reclaim the name of his old band Cabaret Voltaire forty years after he co-founded the original trio in Sheffield with Stephen Mallinder and Christopher R.

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