Cabaret Voltaire - Drinking Gasoline

Cabaret Voltaire came out of Sheffield in 1973, three men with tape loops, a beaten-up rhythm box, and no interest in anything resembling a normal band. They pioneered industrial music before it had a name, and their influence runs through techno, house, hip-hop production, and every act that ever built a song from noise.

Drinking Gasoline, first released in 1985, catches Richard H. Kirk and Stephen Mallinder at their most danceable and their most paranoid at once. Four extended tracks, "Kino," "Sleepwalking," "Big Funk," and "Ghost Talk,", built on hard electronic funk, sampled voices, and dub space.

This was the era when the Cabs were making music for clubs and video screens simultaneously, and the record still sounds like a transmission from a surveillance state with a very good sound system.

Reissued via Mute. Essential for anyone tracing the line from post-punk to techno.