Cabaret Voltaire - Dekadrone (2LP) - White Vinyl

Cabaret Voltaire returned to releasing new music in late 2020, and a few months later Mute followed it up with something stranger and more singular. Dekadrone arrived in March 2021 as a single, long-form piece credited to Cabaret Voltaire, which by then meant Richard H. Kirk working alone in Sheffield under the name he helped define. Issued alongside its sibling BN9Drone, it set aside the body music pulse of Shadow of Fear for a sustained zone of tone, texture and pressure. It is not a throwback or a tidy summary of the group’s history. It is a commitment to duration, and it asks you to meet it halfway.

The structure is simple on paper, yet slippery in practice. Dekadrone unfurls as one continuous movement, built from layers of electronics that seem to breathe. Low frequencies hover like a weather system. High, needling tones flicker at the edges. Rhythms are implied rather than laid down, emerging from cyclical patterns that throb and recede. You can hear the lineage that runs from the tape collage and machine studies of early Cabaret Voltaire to the more austere, late-period experiments Kirk often pursued. There are stretches where it resembles a shortwave radio dream, with the sense that signals are passing by just out of reach.

On first listen I put it on late at night and let the room go dark. That felt right. Dekadrone thrives on patience. Small shifts in timbre start to feel dramatic when you have been living inside the same frequency bed for fifteen minutes. A small swell in the sub, a hiss that blooms into something metallic, a tone that drifts fractionally sharp, and suddenly the piece tilts. It is the kind of sound world you might associate with gallery installations or the quiet end of a festival afternoon. Played loud, it feels physical, which is where the Dekadrone vinyl pressing really comes into its own, the bass carrying as a felt presence more than a clean note.

Context helps. When Kirk revived Cabaret Voltaire for new work, he did so on his own terms, and he was alone in the project’s studio at this point. Dekadrone reflects that solitary focus. It is internal music, thought music, but not academic. The textures feel touched by hand, never antiseptic. You can imagine him nudging a filter, letting a loop run longer, teasing overtones into life. It sits apart from Shadow of Fear, which toys with techno and chugging rhythm, yet it belongs to the same late chapter. Together with BN9Drone, it forms a diptych that underlines how broad the Cabaret Voltaire brief always was. There is a line from the collage experiments of the early Rough Trade singles to this 2021 slab of tone poetry, and it has more to do with attitude than genre.

Reception at the time noted the severity of the approach, and it is true that Dekadrone will test anyone looking for hooks. For those already tuned to the band’s experimental side, it feels like a gift, an hour inside the engine room. There are moments that reward close listening, the way certain harmonics fold into each other, the way the floor falls away then returns. Yet it also works as a piece of environmental sound. I have used it to write, to clean, to stare at the ceiling while the rain hits the verandah. That versatility is part of its quiet charm.

It also carries a little extra weight now. Kirk died in 2021, not long after these releases, and Dekadrone stands as one of the final statements under the Cabaret Voltaire name. It does not chase legacy or tidy endings. It simply insists on the value of listening, of staying with a sound until it changes you. If you have been collecting Cabaret Voltaire vinyl for years, this belongs on the shelf beside the messy early 80s sides and the sleeker 90s stuff, proof that the project never stopped moving.

For anyone crate-digging, Dekadrone vinyl is still around, and it is worth seeking out. If you stumble across a copy at a Melbourne record store, do not hesitate. If you need to buy Cabaret Voltaire records online, check the usual Mute stockists and the better outlets for vinyl records Australia. It also sits neatly within the current run of Cabaret Voltaire albums on vinyl, a reminder that the catalogue is vast and surprisingly elastic. Put it on a quiet night, let the room settle, and watch how your sense of time shifts.