Back in stock: Experimental/Electronic

Review: The arrival of a new Cabaret Voltaire album - the first since 1994 according to our records - should excite all those who hold the work of the pioneering Sheffield outfit dear. It's now a solo project from Richard H Kirk (he decided to keep the name after parting company with Stephen Mallinder in the late '90s), but the distinctive stylistic ticks remain (think paranoid sonic textures, metallic percussion hits, clear dub influences, plentiful spoken word samples, curious electronic noises and nods towards the industrial funk, EBM and post-punk). Naturally it's not as ground-breaking as Kirk and company's work in the '70s and '80s, but it is undeniably a Cabaret Voltaire album - and one that subtly updates the Cabs' particular brand of dense, dancefloor-ready paranoia for a new century.

Review: In 1979, Cabaret Voltaire - then consisting of all three founder members, Richard H. Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson - recorded a soundtrack for an experimental film "for two projectors" by Babeth Mondini. 40 years on, that soundtrack has finally been given a release. It's similar in tone to some of the Sheffield experimentalists' other soundtrack work from the period, offering discordant, unsettling and otherworldly sound collages that fuse heavily modified and processed instrumental parts (guitar, bass, drums, clarinet, saxophone) with tape loops, sampled dialogue and the band's ever-present electronic tones. Whether you're an obsessive Cabs fan or not, it's well worth a listen. This is, after all, a slice of previously hidden musical history.