Cabs casualty confirmed
Member of groundbreaking British band with a strong Burroughs influence has died
NEWS IS coming through that Richard H Kirk of the great British electronic innovators Cabaret Voltaire has died aged 65. The fiercely modern, manipulated sounds and rhythms they devised owed a strong aesthetic debt to the Beats, particularly William S Burroughs and Brion Gysin.
Formed in 1973 and often dubbed the Cabs, they were part of a wave of Sheffield acts who turned to synthesiser technology rather than guitars to make their cutting edge music. The Human League and Heaven 17 were part of the same active city community.
Cabaret Voltaire became particularly known for their sonic collages which acknowledged the cut-up theories that Burroughs and Gysin had devised in the late 1950s in Paris and then applied to novels such as Naked Lunch and Soft Machine and other artworks.
The group’s international connection spread further and stretched earlier still: they took their name from the Dada night club established in Zürich in 1916, a radical and anarchistic response to the horrors of World War I.
In 1996, band member Stephen Mallinder reported to Inpress magazine:
‘I do think the manipulation of sound in our early days – the physical act of cutting up tapes, creating tape loops and all that – has a strong reference to Burroughs and Gysin; in terms of the Dada thing, there's a similarity between the Dadaists' reaction to the bourgeoisie and the war and our own position – we felt alienated from popular culture ourselves.’
Mallinder added: ‘I think those kinds of attitudes become embedded within you, but I'm not sure how it relates now...’
Pictured below: Cabaret Voltaire…Richard H Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson
My one-time colleague in the Leeds University School of Music, the composer Nick Williams writes: ‘When I was 17 I depped in an experimental group from Sheffield University - the director (a composer called Robert Dickinson who played briefly with Magazine shortly after) knew the Cabs and got them a gig in the music department at the uni They were meant to come up to the Edinburgh Fringe with us but in the end couldn't come so they sent a film instead. I remember the first part was very abstract animation, and the second was a slow-motion baked bean fight between the band...At the time (1976) I had no idea who they were but began to explore their output – somewhere I still have my vinyl 12'' EP of Three Mantras. Although I work in the more “classical” side of new music, Cabaret Voltaire were a big influence on me. Always grateful to Robert Dickinson (whom I haven't seen since) for introducing me to them and pointing a way towards breaking down barriers between contemporary “composed” music and what was happening on the post-punk scene. Very sad to hear of Kirk's death. I shall listen to Three Mantras tonight.’
Nick Williams adds: ‘The Sheffield University/Robert Dickinson connection is mentioned on p. 245 of Simon Reynolds' Totally Wired (interview with Kirk - he talks about a tape for the Edinburgh Fringe but I distinctly remember it as being a film) and Dickinson has a passing mention in Rip It Up in relation to Magazine/Dick Witts/Manchester new music collective (Robert came originally from Manchester but studied at Sheffield)...’