Cabaret Voltaire share a new track, ‘Billion Dollar’, taken from the Shadow Of Funk EP, out on 26 February 2021. The new EP, out on limited edition coloured vinyl and digitally, follows 2020’s album Shadow Of Fear, Cabaret Voltaire’s first release with Richard H. Kirk as the sole member of the band.
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This new 3-track EP is a companion piece to the album and shows a harder, more propulsive side reflecting the album’s genesis – live performance. Cabaret Voltaire have been performing select festivals and venues since 2014’s Berlin Atonal festival, and elements of the 12” will be familiar to attendees of the more recent shows.
Shadow Of Fear and the Shadow Of Funk EP are interconnected and part of a series of four releases that continue into the spring with the release of two drone albums. The first of these, a 50-minute piece entitled Dekadrone, is due out on 26 March 2021. The second, and final release in the series, the 64-minute piece BN9Drone is released on 23 April 2021. Both will be available on CD and limited edition double vinyl.
Cabaret Voltaire has always been a group ahead of their time, even prescient at times, and this series carries on that evolution.
Kirk explains, “The current situation didn’t have much of an influence on what I was doing – all the vocal content was already in place before the panic set in – but maybe due to my nature of being a bit paranoid there are hints in there about stuff going a bit weird and capturing the current state of affairs.”
Recent years’ live performances and 2020’s album release, described by Uncut in their lead review as “a brash and confident rebirth”, began a new era for the pioneering Sheffield outfit whose influence across electronic, post-punk and industrial music remains an untouchable one today. Talking about the intention for this propulsive series of releases, Richard H. Kirk was clear: “The mission statement from the off was no nostalgia. Normal rules do not apply. Something for the 21st Century. No old material.”