Cabaret Voltaire - "Red Mecca"

In honor of the swearing in of Robert Gates as the new defense secretary, I'm posting this record because of its provocative title. The guy says we're losing in Iraq, and implies that we should maybe come up with some kind of time-table for withdrawal--then he gets the job, and makes a speech about how he's gonna whack the hornets' nest of "Islamic fascism" some more. Should be a sweet few years under this guy...

I'm also posting this album because it kicks a whole lot of ass. Opening (and ending) with CV's take on Henry Mancini's "A Touch of Evil" (a theme the composer originally wrote for an Orson Welles picture of the same title), the atmosphere is immediately established: this record is clearly going to be one of those dark, visceral trips into places most people don't like their psyche to go.

While I have no idea what any of these songs are actually about, the overall tone is pretty menacing and pretty well suited to times of doubt and uncertainty. "Sly Doubt", the second track, is one of my favorites, as is the diptych "Red Mask"/"Black Mask". Stephen Mallinder's in top form here, all rambling digitally-effected vocals and low, dread-filled bass.

I wish Cabaret Voltaire had stayed closer to experimental and improv music, based on the results evidenced by this album. Instead they went on to found modern industrial music and to this day, every major metropolitan area still has a club where kids with shitty haircuts/bad dye jobs, eyeliner, and fishnet t-shirts can go and dance with hot young ice queens decked out in tall leather boots and Vast merchandise. Well, thank god for progress--if not for CV's later generic-sounding crap records, we might still be grooving to awesome stuff like Red Mecca!

Aye-aye-aye. So anyway, this is the second-to-last full album I'm planning on posting before I revert to a "two-to-four songs per post" format. The one I plan to put up last (probably on Saturday) is so bitchin' that you won't want to hear anything in its entirety again, because your mind will be so fragmented by processsing the first track alone that you won't be able to handle anything other than three-minute singles anyway.