Cabaret Voltaire returns with first new album in 26 years — hear first single ‘Vasto’

Pioneering electronic music act Cabaret Voltaire — now just co-founder Richard H. Kirk — will release its first new album in 26 years this November, an eight-song collection called Shadow of Fear that was born out of Kirk’s return to live performance in 2014.

You can hear the first single, “Vasto,” below.

The album, the band’s first since 1994’s The Conversation, is due out Nov. 20 via Mute Records. It can be pre-ordered now via Amazon.com or through the band’s own online shop in a variety of different bundles.

Co-founded by Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson, Cabaret Voltaire originally was active between 1973 and 1994. Watson left in 1981 and Mallinder has not been involved since the group became inactive in 1994. Kirk resurrected Cabaret Voltaire in 2014 for a live performance at Berlin’s Atonal festival.

“The mission statement from the off was no nostalgia,” Kirk says in a news release announcing the new album. “Normal rules do not apply. Something for the 21st Century. No old material.”

The new album, he says, “was finished just as all the weirdness was starting to kick in. Shadow of Fear feels like a strangely appropriate title. 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.”

Below, hear the new song “Vasto” and see the album’s full tracklist.

Cabaret Voltaire, Shadow of Fear

1. “Be Free”
2. “The Power (Of Their Knowledge)”
3. “Night Of The Jackal”
4. “Microscopic Flesh Fragment”
5. “Papa Nine Zero Delta United”
6. “Universal Energy”
7. “Vasto”
8. “What’s Goin’ On”

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