"Double Vision Presents: Cabaret Voltaire" was originally released on VHS back in 1982. Not only was this date a good couple of years prior to it being commonplace for private homes to own videos, but "Double Vision" was also significant as it represented one of the earliest independent underground 'rock' video collections the unsuspecting world would be subjected to.
However, as well as a crucial sonic archaeological find, "Double Vision...." stil holds its' own in the 21st Century. The Cabs' murky, post-Watergate proto-electronica remains as challenging and potent as ever, and when coupled with such uncompromising visual aids, their oeuvre is as compelling as hell.
"Double Vision..." broadly represents the Sheffield trio's Rough Trade period 1978 - 1982, and while certainly much of the material (often drawn from a variety of Super 8 sources) is undeniably primitive by today's digital standards, it's chilling and futuristic when you consider this stuff was being pieced together when most of us who date that far back were still getting to grips with skinny-tied New Wave bands.
Highlights are many and varied. The frantic, pre-house disco rhythms of "Diskono" are accompanied by endlessly looped footage of tower blocks and girl mannequins, while Stephen Mallinder's unsmiling presence is superimposed over the top. It's a fine , unnerving opener, and soon followed by nervy slices of brilliance such as "Obsession" and "Badge Of Evil." The former finds grainy footage of ritual warriors from Papua/ New Guinea and old sci-fi movie cut-ups married to a slice of subterranean evil levered up by Mallinder's Jah Wobble-ish bass, while the weird, Iggy-meets-Clock DVA rumblings of "Badge Of Evil" are the ideal foil for the black and white eye close-ups that loom in the background.
Naturally, we also get the classic Rough Trade singles "Nag Nag Nag" and "Seconds Too Late." The former is maybe THE pioneering electro-punk anthem and its' fuzzy, blanched sound is accompanied by X-Ray style footage, including close-ups of Mallinder's teeth(!), while "Seconds Too Late" comes with a visual barrage of multiple flickering TV screens. That's remarkable enough in itself, but purely sonically (the most chilling Krautdub ever beamed in from Pluto's most distant moon, basically) "Seconds..." is still light years ahead of its' time.
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The nighmarish quality of the Cabs' work rarely lets up. The Peter Care collaboration "Johnny YesNo" is prefixed by scary nocturnal imagery of the Ku Klux Klan (spookier than ever in the week America decides at the polls once again), while "Photophobia" finds footage of soldiers and East German civilians attempting to escape over the Berlin Wall pitted against a looped, semi-spoken dialogue redolent of the mind-control scenes from "The Ipcress File." Equally unlikely and impenetrable is the closing "Moscow", which is a proto-ambient piece similar in hue to the experimental stuff Kirk, Mallinder and Watson laid down during their early period prior to Punk.
Double Vision was also the name the Cabs gave to their communications company they founded with Paul Smith. They would continue on with a view to releasing affordable music-based video and became a vehicle for visual releases by other influential, primarily electronic-based outfits such as Throbbing Gristle, The Residents, 23 Skidoo and Tuxedomoon. From there, further releases by the likes of Eric Random, Clock DVA and the Cabs would transform it into a forward-thinking record label in its' own right.
But that's purely historical context and a separate story in itself. "Double Vision Presents: Cabaret Voltaire", though, remains a striking collection over 20 years after its' intial release, and while CV would continue to make further great visually-assisted singles such as "Yashar" and "Sensoria" as the 80s progressed, it's the period captured by "Double Vision" that remains their artistic motherlode. Revisit with haste.
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