If youıve seen the film Event Horizon, you will remember that the plot involved an experimental space ship which was able to travel through several dimensions at once. This craft went missing on its maiden voyage but eventually re-appeared several years later. A crew was sent out to investigate what had happened to it and discovered that the Event Horizon had travelled to a hell dimension and brought back with it a truck load of strange, scary shit with it. Something very similar happened to my DVD player. After going missing for a few weeks my DVD player returned from hell with Doublevision Present; Cabaret Voltaire playing on it.
Cabaret Voltaire were originally formed around 1973. A Sheffield based, "bedroom synth noir" band that benefited from the space opened up by punk in the late seventies. Totally influenced by the New York underground of Burroughs, the Velvet Underground and Suicide, and Krautrock like early Kraftwerk, Faust, Can and Neu!, the first Cabs EP 'Extended Play' came out in 1978. 'Extended Play' included "Do the Mussolini (Headkick)" and a version of the Velvets "Here She Comes Now", on which the original is shattered into a million tiny pieces. This was the soundtrack to the JG Ballard landscapes of High Rise and Crash played on cheap synths, distorted guitars and primitive drum machines.
Doublevision were a communications company formed by Cabaret Voltaire and film maker Paul Smith in 1982. The catalyst for this collaboration being Paul Smith looking for "something more 'intimate' than rock egos, less corporate than conventional pop-videos and more far reaching than the video exhibitions he was running at the Midland group art centre". Simultaneously the Cabs were looking for "an impetus to expand on their, then limited, work with dadaism and cut-up as applied to video", (although, playing live, they had been using underground films as back projections since around 1978). Doublevision Presents; Cabaret Voltaire (DV1) was their first collaboration.
The unique philosophy in founding Doublevision was explained by Paul Smith to Tom Vague in a interview originally published in Zig Zag, Vol 3, number 2 (November 1985): "We gathered two major points during that period. Firstly that 60% of everything you learn is from what you see - which I thought was quite interesting if youıre talking in terms of the Cabs and subversive sound - obviously you could potentially put more information across in a visual thing. And the other thing was that the basis of video needed to be exploited, in that video is potentially more "punk" than records could ever be. You get the potential power of manipulating moving images and the potential power of distributing that information through some colossal corporate cock-up. Someone somewhere must be banging their head in disbelief that they made these machines that are designed to bootleg off TV. Theyıre effectively undermining that whole western thing about ownership and re-sale."
Although by current standards the quality of 'Doublevision Present:' is poor, that's not the point. Like all cutting edge art and music, it has to be put into the context of the time. Doublevision were on a mission to wrestle music video away from gits like Duran Duran and infuse it with the spirit of underground/guerrilla film-making, and to make it affordable (to put this into context, this was one of the first independent long form videos ever made and at a time when they cost some where between £40 and £70 to buy, this was being sold for around £15.)
Itıs not easy to watch as it is a total mind-fuck of a viewing experience. Its all distorted cut-ups of live performance, news and documentary footage, Super 8 and stills transferred to video, pornography and in some cases just a camera pointed at a TV screen all drenched in prehistoric digital effects. Itıs a bit like trying to watch an edition of Panorama made by Chelsea Girls period Warhol and Eraserhead period David Lynch - basically it is really fucking weird. Paul Smith described it as "mood-video", stating "I can still watch DV1 and see different frames in it. But I would say, most of it I couldnıt watch for more than half-an-hour or so - because personally I find it fairly intense, whereas most TV you see is like an eye-wash." If this is eye-wash it has been laced with paint stripper.
Musically it is very dark and brooding, exploring the same barren psychogeography as Throbbing Gristle and this fits perfectly with the flickering, abstract images on the screen. This is brutal, claustrophobic, industrial dance music. "Photophobia" is extreme industrial-dub (King Tubby meets Cabs uptown Sheffield) and is dark as fuck. The most accessible track is "Nag, Nag, Nag" which compared to the other tracks is almost a pop moment. If you feel a need to check out the early Cabs stuff then I recommend that you try to find a copy of The Living Legends which was originally released on Mute in 1990. Alternatively there is a "best of" titled The Original Sound Of Sheffield 78/82 again on Mute. No doubt these will soon get a dusting down as part of Muteıs re-release programme. This really is complete intense headfuck music, some light years ahead of the early techno coming from Detroit. Cabaret Voltaire and Throbbing Gristle were hugely popular underground acts during the e arly 80ıs in Belgium, hence, indirectly, having a massive influence on early 90ıs European Techno. Although Throbbing Gristle tend to get more retrospective press coverage (mainly because of the utter out-thereness of Genesis P Orridge) maybe this is now the time to re-assess the DIY ethos of the Cabs and their mainly uncredited influence on dance music. Although they lost the plot somewhat towards the end of the 80ıs (the stuff on EMI was not good) Cabaret Voltaire continued recording well into the mid 90ıs, by then they were making really interesting Techno records. Founder Cabs member Richard H Kirk has kept busy. As well as putting out the seminal early Techno track "Test One" on Warp as Sweet Exorcist, he has recorded and released records under his own name and as Sandoz. For loads more information about the Cabs and Richard H Kirk check out the site www.brainwashed.com which has a really good detailed discography and band history.
The visual influence of Doublevision Presents; Cabaret Voltaire resonated throughout the early 90ıs rave scene. Check out the recent compilation of Warp videos - the cut up, kinetically arresting style of the Cabs video work is evident in many of the early cuts! It is now common for bands to work with their own people in creating their own visual identity - U2 took the Cabs ideas to absurd extremes when they created the Zoo TV stage show . Doublevision continued throughout most of the eighties and left behind an "interesting" legacy of experimental video and music. DV2 was TG: Heathen Earth/Live At Oundle School which is essential Throbbing Gristle. DV4 was a compilation titled TV Wipeout which included video work by Yello, The Fall, David Bowie, Andy Warhol, Psychic TV and Bill Nelson. If you look hard on some of the TG/PTV web sites you may still find copies of these (cyberspace is the perfect medium for TG fans as generally most of them are not allowed sharp objects). L ater Doublevision releases got quite adventurous - DV7 was a Derek Jarman film In The Shadow Of The Sun which had a TG soundtrack. The Residents very strange and wonderful The Mole Show/Vileness Fats cropped up as DV9. One of the edgiest Doublevision releases was The Enemy Within : The Days After which contained various agit-vids including a piece called STRIKE which was originally commissioned by 80ıs top pop telly programme The Tube but then dropped like a stone when they freaked out over it.
You canıt really do a piece about underground video in the early 80ıs without a brief mention of IKON and Psychic Television. IKON were affiliated to Factory Records (and no doubt lost shit loads of money as did everything else involved with Factory during that period) and were on a mission to be as obscure and arty as possible. Possibly the most interesting /bizarre thing that IKON released was the product of an American video group called The Survival Research Laboratories. This involved exploding dead cows and radio controlled robots destroying each other with highly corrosive acid (imagine Robot Wars without utter dweebs taking themselves too seriously, but with insane motherfuckers smashing shit up - the main man from SRL managed to blow a hand off fucking around with a dangerous amount of fuck-off pyrotechnics). If anything needs to be reissued from this period it is possibly this.
In collaboration with IKON the first release from Psychic Television was a piece called The Final Academy which featured work by William S Burroughs amongst others. PTV originally was an attempt by Genesis P Orridge to push this new medium right into the abyss. Writing in the same Zig Zag feature as the Tom Vague piece about Doublevision, Genesis laid out a manifesto of sorts, stating : "Releasing videos of concerts is not enough. That is stage one. History. Releasing cut ups of familiar material off TV and off movies is not enough. That is stage two. What IKON, Doublevision and Psychic TV are doing is feeling out the problem, developing a network. What Psychic TV intend to go to stage three. A declaration of political, magikal and sexual war through video. Both in the search for a video method that integrates the conscious and the unconscious mind, that satisfies and confuses, stimulates and questions in its construction and imagery, that does not frustrate. And to back-u p this research to have an encyclopaedia, a video-library, in ongoing volumes that contains ANYTHING that might be of use, or lost, or suppressed by any overground distribution system. The exciting thing about video is that it can be more than music documentation. It can intergrate sound, vision and action in a way never possible before. It is the nearest thing youıll ever get to an electronic Molotov. Go out and throw one. Cause the cathode ray tubes to resonate and implode. You are your own screen." As we now know, he was describing the power of the internet and not video. Its debatable that PTV ever achieved their goal as videomakers as video was absorbed into the mainstream pretty quickly, mainly as a promotional tool on MTV and not an art form. There are still underground video makers but they donıt work with many record companies. Apart from Chris Cunningham there aren't many contemporary video makers that can switch from making stuff for Madonna to downright disturbing and unbroadcastable promos like Come To Daddy for the Aphex Twin. But there was a time when Doublevision Present; Cabaret Voltaire was originally released and anything seemed possible.
Chinese "Nathan Barley" Elvis Feb 2005