Cabaret Voltaire - Shadow Of Fear (2LP) - 45RPM Purple Vinyl

Shadow Of Fear lands like a late transmission from a radio tower that never stopped humming, only no one was listening properly. Cabaret Voltaire’s first studio album since 1994’s The Conversation arrived on 20 November 2020 via Mute, and it is entirely the work of Richard H. Kirk, the sole remaining member by that point. He had been performing under the Cabaret Voltaire name alone since 2014, insisting on all-new material rather than leaning on the early industrial classics. Shadow Of Fear follows that line. It looks forward, but you can still feel the Sheffield grit that shaped the group from the start.

The record was made at Western Works in Sheffield, a studio that has become part of Cabaret Voltaire lore. You can hear why he went back there. The room tone is part of the music, those dry drum machines and scuffed synths pinging around like light in a concrete stairwell. Kirk keeps the palette spare but stubborn. Beats are steely and patient, bass sequences lock in and refuse to budge, and the whole thing is threaded with cut-up voices that sound like public announcements caught on a faulty recorder. On paper that reads austere. In practice it is physical, even funky, the kind of groove that creeps up from the floor rather than barging in through the door.

What makes it compelling is Kirk’s sense of proportion. He knows when to let a single riff breathe for minutes, and when to drop in a siren, a radio squawk, a scrap of laughter. There is no retro sheen or museum polish, just a living system of rhythm and interference. You get the old Cab Volt tension between order and chaos, only now it leans closer to hypnotic techno than to clanging post-punk. That shift suits his later aesthetic. It also fits the moment. The album was completed during the first wave of pandemic turmoil, and the title rings like a summary of the year. You do not need lyrics to feel the paranoia. It is in the clack of the snares and the way those sampled voices crowd the edges of the mix.

If you have followed Kirk’s interviews over the years, his approach here tracks with what he kept saying. No nostalgia. No greatest hits shows. Build new machines and see where they take you. Shadow Of Fear is proof of concept. The sound design is meticulous but not precious. He lets oscillators drift a bit out of tune, and the percussion has an almost hand-made push and pull. These choices add human bite. It is easy to imagine him at Western Works, surrounded by blinking boxes, running a phrase through a tape unit, nudging a filter by millimetres until a dull throb turns into a heartbeat.

There is a temptation to talk about legacy only in terms of influence, and of course Cabaret Voltaire’s fingerprints are everywhere, from basement techno to art-damaged pop. But the album does not feel like a curtain call. It moves with urgency. For listeners who came in through early records on Rough Trade, the skeletal funk will feel familiar, yet the production is colder and more streamlined, closer to the post-industrial clubs that carried Kirk’s solo work through the 2000s. It is a bridge between eras that never lapses into self-quotation. By the final stretch you realise how cohesive it is. Themes recur, textures return, and each piece dots a different part of the same map.

On vinyl the record really settles into its skin. Mute’s cut has weight, with kicks landing firmly and those ghost voices hovering just behind your shoulder. If you are browsing Cabaret Voltaire vinyl and wondering where to start in the later period, this is a strong entry point. Shadow Of Fear vinyl copies do not tend to sit long on the shelves of a good Melbourne record store, and with Kirk’s passing in 2021 it has taken on an added charge. It is not a memorial though. It is a statement that stands on its own.

If you collect Cabaret Voltaire albums on vinyl, file this next to The Crackdown and then jump to his solo outings to trace the through-line. For anyone looking to buy Cabaret Voltaire records online, this one rewards repeated plays. The grooves unravel slowly, and the detail blossoms on good speakers. It also sits well in a set with contemporary techno and leftfield electronics, which speaks to its continued relevance. For heads in vinyl records Australia circles, it is an easy staff pick, the sort of thing you hand to someone who likes their beats lean and their atmospheres charged. Shadow Of Fear is a late-era highlight, and it feels alive every time the needle drops.