Mix Up

'Mix-Up', their first album originally on Rough Trade from 1979, impressively harnesses noise, primitive rhythm box percolations, tape loops, garbled vocals, and blasts of farfisa. 'Kirlian Photograph' is an ugly slab of dub with frizzling snaps of white-heat buzz, clunky percussion, and a plodding bass line forming its skanking, roiling rhythm. Both the bass and incidental vocals are relegated to the back of the mix as the piercing detritus takes centre stage. a cover of the seeds' 'No Escape' evidences Cabaret Voltaire's paradox as a seemingly anti-rockist band who - at their heart (for the first several years, at least) - was a garage band.