RICHARD H. KIRK - RIP

 

The unexpected passing of experimental electronic music pioneer, Richard H. Kirk, has got me thinking about how his work has impacted my own personal musical journey through the decades. Not only since I first came across Cabaret Voltaire so long ago, but also because I kept rediscovering him over and over through his solo works released under their innumerable aliases. I first heard Cabs way back in 1981 when a high school buddy and band mate in my first band, Mark, bought a copy of Voice of America. He’d special ordered the album based on a recommendation from his cousin. Mark had sent him a cassette of some demos we’d recorded and he’d told him we sounded a lot like this band from Sheffield in the UK. So Mark ordered the album and, when he eventually picked it up from the shop, we ended up going back to his place to check it out since he had a proper hi-fi stereo system. After our first listen, Mark was a bit ambivalent about the album, but I heard something in it that I instantly took a shining to and offered to buy the record off him. That’s how I acquired my first proper “Industrial” album for my growing little record collection.

Voice of America was an album that clicked with me for a number of reasons, mostly down to the way the drum machines sounded, Mal’s deep bass throb, Chris’ cheesy organ & disorienting tapes and Kirk’s piercing guitar & clarinet stabs. My full-stop favorite record at the time was PiL’s Metal Box (Second Edition), and there was a definite kinship between the two given the atonal, metallic din of CV’s sound. But there was a lot more experimentation going with Cabs than even PiL were up for and that started opening my mind up to all sorts of new possibilities in terms of structure and sounds. Plus the band looked absolutely miserable on the cover with their long black overcoats, frazzled fringes and glowering glares. It was all very appealing to my sense of teenage post-punk angst.

From there, I next encountered some of their singles like Nag Nag Nag, which sounded like this amazing fusion of electronic and punk and showed just how simple you could keep things and still whack out a catchy, furious ditty. Then there was Seconds Too Late, which I heard shortly after moving to the big city and discovering my first underground after-hours warehouse nightclub. This was in early 1983 and I can clearly remember that immense bass sound pulsing through the PA while its ghostly synths drifted over top. Seeing all these wild looking spiky haired Goths dancing away in the dimly lit shadows of this hidden nest of subversion was one of those magical experiences that stays with you for your entire life. I felt like I was in a post apocalyptic sci-fi movie, which was aided by the chemical enhancements that were available at the time. This was soon followed by encountering the single version of Yashar in a more mainstream, legit nightclub. It's a song that would set the template for the group’s metamorphosis into something truly “club friendly”.

Of course, this was the shift into serious dance music with the release of The Crackdown. It became the root DNA for all the electronic dance music which would come to dominate the more hardcore dance clubs throughout the ‘80s. Everything that would become “EBM” or “cyber-punk” was rooted in The Crackdown’s pulsing beats and riveting synth-bass. For me, they did it first, they did it best and they were the godfathers of that sound. That was, however, a bit of a double edged sword. As that style became more codified, popular and ubiquitous (and ultimately cliched), it started to drive me away from Cabaret Voltaire’s subsequent works, though I would continue to delve into their earlier catalogue and fall in love with everything from Mix-Up to Red Mecca to 2x45 and compilations of their early singles and EPs like Eight Crepuscule Tracks, which kicked off with the massively inspirational, Sluggin’ For Jesus.

For the most part, however, the later half of the ‘80s and most of the ‘90s had me leaving Cabs behind and going into the worlds of Chicago Acid House and UK & European electronica. It wasn’t until 1998 that I spotted this CD by Sandoz called “In Dub - Chant to Jah”, that I would chance to cross paths with Kirk again. I didn’t even realize he was behind that project at first and bought the CD purely because I’d seen the name Sandoz associated with Psychic TV and knew that it was an LSD reference. When I got around to looking at the album’s credits, seeing Kirk’s name attached was a most pleasant surprise! The album’s fusion of electronica and reggae made it a frequent listen in my home and I ended up picking up anything I came across with that name on it.

What I didn’t realize was that Kirk had become a shape-shifter and was putting out obscure titles under a plethora of pseudonyms and it wouldn’t be until early in 2020 that I finally sat down and seriously started trying to put all the pieces of that puzzle together. Thanks to Discogs extensive database and cross-referencing tools, I was able to ferret out innumerable side projects, collaborations and one-off gems strewn about from releases issued throughout the last three decades. That got me on a binge of it all since I was able to find a good deal of it on YouTube. There was a wide range of styles to explore from straight up dance techno to ambient to noise to downtempo and everything in between.

This foray into his obscure solo catalogue was preceded by a re-examination of Cabaret Voltaire’s later works after The Crackdown up until their last album before going into hiatus, The Conversation (1994). While some of the more mainstream leaning albums like Code and Groovy, Laidback & Nasty now show a bit of their age since their release, CV’s releases in the 1990s returned to something that now sounds more timeless and hold up well compared to anything released by their contemporaries of that era. The 1992 album, Plasticity, in particular works exceptionally well in the realm of underground electronica.

Finally, in late 2020, Kirk formally revived Cabaret Voltaire with the release of Shadow of Fear. It’s an album that hearkens back to the earlier edgy grooves of albums like Voice of America while bringing it all forward to the 21st century and the zeitgeist of the current times. With the specter of pandemics, war and environmental collapse infusing the music, it has a familiar sense of dread and anxiety while also making you want to tap your toes. It was, as it had been in the beginning, dance music for the end of the world, but now with 45 years of experience and living built into its essence. It was clear that Kirk was still on the edge of the curve and able to create music that was able to build on the past while looking forward and eschewing any sense of nostalgia, a concept Kirk often made clear was anathema to his process.

I suspect there’s a lot of material in Kirk’s vaults which remains unreleased, both in terms of older material and projects that were just completed or nearing completion. I expect we’ll be able to enjoy his works for some time to come, but it’s still very sad to know he was hardly at the point of losing steam in his creative career and that he was cut off while still rolling down the tracks. But one thing is certain. He’s left a mammoth legacy of incredibly varied and influential music that’s had an impact on generations and it will continue to do so for generations to come.