CABARET VOLTAIRE

While we’re at it, inviting icons who topped the charts in the 80s, we might as well do it properly. Right then, yet another headliner for Sunday 2 August: put on a helmet or duck in time, because we’re throwing CABARET VOLTAIRE at your triumphant heads. Cabaret Voltaire are indeed taking on the role of headliners, as it falls to them to round off the first weekend of the Lokerse Feesten in our Club. For millennials or those born even later: Cabaret Voltaire are a duo, though they began as a trio in 1970s Sheffield. Industrial noise, tape loops, unusual and unsettling sounds, and electronic fizzing – they moulded these into a frenzy that caused the first cracks to appear in the cavity walls of the clubs where they performed. Cabaret Voltaire is one of those bands that never followed a trend; no, they were the trend. From ‘Nag Nag Nag’ (1979) to ‘Yashar’, via ‘Sensoria’ to ‘Vasto’. The path that Cabaret Voltaire paved for others is built on beats, on a drive for progress and on a clatter that forces body and limbs into all sorts of strange contortions on the dance floor. Despite the loss of legend Richard H. Kirk in 2021, Cabaret Voltaire remains as vibrant as ever. Thankfully, because this isn’t music for museums, retrospective documentaries or bouts of nostalgia; this is a band whose mark is etched on every musical pulse in the world. Not that we’re imposing a dress code, but still: put on your spikiest dancing shoes and go for it until you’re too tired to even say the second ‘Nag’ in ‘Nag Nag Nag’.