When it comes down to it, while I can respect the huge influence that Cabaret Voltaire had on the growth of New Wave-y type sounds, the one CV album I still really enjoy listening to is The Conversation. Yup, their ambient techno double album, alternately ignored or hated by fans of their earlier work. While I do like some of their earlier stuff (see below), it’s usually overly long and poorly edited. As a general rule, the vocals are great for the first four minutes and increasingly less-great for the four minutes that follow.
What I like about The Conversation is that it is richly thematic, and the form actually lends itself to being too long and far too stingy with the edit button.
Anyway, things change, stay the same, etc etc and so forth: Continue reading
here there be rodents 