Unsung Podcast

Cabaret Voltaire are no one thing. Depending on which corner of the internet you found us from, you might know them as the caustic Sheffield noise act who preceded post-punk, the sinister electro-industrial outfit with a penchant for evangelical samples and anti-fascist agitprop, or the dancefloor-adjacent act who fetched up on Factory's Belgian satellite label and made something close to club music. You're all correct.
This week, we have a guide. Phil Eaglesham — P6, former front person of Stretchheads and De Salvo, current singer in OMO, musical walking tour operator, man of broad and alarming musical learnings — is here to help us navigate one of the most complex and wilfully uncommercial bands to come out of the UK, via their transitional compilation Eight Crepuscule Tracks.
We trace the band's origins in a Sheffield attic in 1973, chart their debts to dub, Black American music, and the sci-fi soundscapes that shaped a generation of working-class ears, and make the case that Cabaret Voltaire — despite their apparent difficulty — were one of the most industrious and fundamentally political bands of their era. We also get into their time at Western Works Studio, which functioned less like a recording facility and more like the gravitational centre of an entire Sheffield scene; their complicated relationship with Rough Trade; and their connections to Joy Division, Lydia Lunch, Clock DVA, and the bands that would become the Human League and ABC.
Along the way, Phil brings original artefacts including a signed 1979 TG/Cab Vol/Rema Rema poster from Tottenham Court Road, and the original 12-inches the album is built from. We also ask what would have happened to Cabaret Voltaire without punk — and conclude they'd likely have ended up an academic footnote rather than a foundational text. Highlights: 00:00 Intro
03:56 Meet Phil Eaglesham
07:47 P6 — The Name and the Character
09:29 Queer Identity in the Industrial Scene
12:55 Pseudonyms and Rockism
17:44 Cabaret Voltaire: The Basics
22:32 Sheffield, Western Works, and the Scene
25:18 Rough Trade, The Fall, and Being Prolific
29:10 Working-Class Roots and Industrial Culture
32:33 Sci-Fi Soundscapes and Electronic Prehistory
35:11 Musique Concrète to Cab Vol: How Close Were They?
36:13 Dadaism, Situationism, and Confrontational Art
38:40 Punk's Effect on Audiences (Not Just Music)
40:11 The Counterfactual: Cab Vol Without Punk
41:43 Black Music, Funk, and the DNA Nobody Talks About
43:39 New Wave, No Wave, and New York Connections
46:29 Factory Records, Crépuscule, and the Belgian Connection
47:49 Original Artefacts: Posters, 12-Inches, and History
50:31 Why Eight Crepuscule Tracks?
52:54 Looking Towards Next Week and Outro

We don't often cover classical or neoclassical music, as it’s a wee bit out of our wheelhouse. But that doesn’t mean we don’t enjoy it—often, our entry into that world is via film soundtracks. Jóhann Jóhannsson is a perfect example, having scored some of the most iconic films of the last 20 years.
However, that’s only part of the story. Jóhannsson also released a series of acclaimed solo records; this week, we’re focusing almost exclusively on that solo output, while also providing an account of his life, his key cinematic works, and his tragic passing in 2018.
We chart his path from early days in indie bands to the cross-genre think tank Kitchen Motors, and his meteoric rise as a composer for films like Prisoners, Sicario, Arrival, and The Theory of Everything (for which he won a Golden Globe and earned an Oscar nomination). From there, we take a closer look at his solo discography, including IBM 1401: A User’s Manual (built from his father’s vintage computer recordings), Fordlandia, and the short-film soundtrack And in the Endless Pause There Came the Sound of Bees, as well as posthumous releases like Gold Dust.
We cap things off with a discussion regarding his death and the question of whether the pressures of Hollywood played a role in his demise, before focusing exclusively on his 2016 masterpiece, Orphée.
00:00 Intro
03:56 Meet Jóhann Jóhannsson
07:47 Early Life And Indie Bands
09:29 Labels And Influences
12:55 Chris' Hildur Guðnadóttir Facebook Scam Story
17:44 Solo Albums Breakdown
22:32 IBM 1401 Masterpiece
25:18 Fordlandia And Later Works
29:10 Film Breakthrough And Awards
32:33 Blade Runner Score Rejected
35:11 Blade Runner Score Shakeup
36:13 Zimmer Versus Vangelis
38:40 Jóhann Interview Clues
40:11 Who Made The Call
41:43 mother! And The Scrapped Soundtrack
43:39 Experimental Sound Design
46:29 Final Projects And Legacy
47:49 Last And First Men
50:31 Posthumous Releases
52:54 Death And Tributes
55:39 Did Hollywood Kill Him
58:48 Orphée Album Deep Dive
01:08:32 Why His Music Matters

This week, we're talking about two things we think are quite interesting. First off, we chat about the early mathcore/metalcore band Drowningman and reflect on why they never quite reached the heights of their peers, such as Converge and The Dillinger Escape Plan—bands they often found themselves touring with in the late 90s and early 00s.
While that story is compelling in itself, Drowningman can also count themselves among the artists who tried to sabotage a contractual obligation to a record label. As the story goes, they hit the studio with Kurt Ballou (Converge, God City Studios) to record a very weird album, tentatively titled Best Album Ever. The record was never officially released; it was allegedly created with the sole intention of being purposefully bad in order to satisfy, and terminate, their two-album contract with Revelation Records. In the end it never saw the light of day.
This got us thinking about other artists who have tried to escape their contractual obligations. We use this lens to take a wee sojourn into the annals of music history, unearthing stories of several big-name artists who tried, and sometimes succeeded, in doing something similar.
We hope you enjoy! Highlights:
00:00 Intro
01:27 Skipping the Discourse
01:56 Viral Bands Debate
02:59 Patreon Pitch
05:37 Awkward Party Exits
06:17 Meet Drowningman
08:19 Origins and Scene
12:00 Early Releases Breakdown
16:07 Rock and Roll Killing Machine Era
21:07 Later Records and Fadeout
24:47 Did They Deserve Bigger
27:05 Contractual Obligation Albums
35:38 Ozzy Contract Loophole
36:25 Speak of the Devil Drama
38:05 Ozzy Album Aftermath
38:57 Neil Young vs Geffen
39:49 Beach Boys Owed Album
40:55 More Contract Escapes
42:40 Sisters of Mercy SSV
45:46 More Obligation Oddities
47:43 Rolling Stones Provocation
50:31 Zappa Lather Bootleg
51:25 Prince vs Warner Saga
57:42 Drowning Man Review
59:32 Track Highlights Breakdown
01:02:56 Final Verdict and Wrap
01:06:21 Outro and Thanks

This week's episode is another FROM THE VAULT as we travel back to one of our (sadly) many episodes that were recorded during the pandemic. This one is actually a condensing of two episodes on the weird/genius/odd/interesting music, and personality, of pianist Lubomyr Melnyk. Enjoy!
Chris has been chomping at the bit to do this Lubomyr Melnyk album for a while. In fact, some may even remember that he brought it up during our Pandemic Mixtape. Well, the time has come to finally tackle this post-classical/minimalist work and in doing so we absolutely had to cover his…interesting thoughts on musical philosophy. Which cascades into his questionable thoughts on the actual science of how sound works. Which takes us down a big old rabbit hole, as I’m sure you can imagine.
All of this to say that it takes us a while to get to the album as a result. Also, the dude’s done like 20+ albums (although we don’t cover all of them) so that’s another whole thing we had to deal with.
We also talk about continuous music (the genre he reckons he’s in…of which he is the only practitioner), his incredible piano playing speed and a bunch more things.
Our voyage into continuous music comes to a close as we dig into Lubomyr Melnyk’s eighteenth (!) album Corollaries. For the unfamiliar, Melnyk categorises his style as being something almost beyond classical music, yet this release sees him team up with neoclassical composers Nils Frahm and Peter Broderick. This album seemed to give Melnyk a new lease of life; upon getting together with Frahm and Broderick he stated “Where were you in my thirties?”, a statement that stands in stark contrast to his general aversion to playing with other musicians in the years before.
There’s a lot to be said about Melnyk’s playing, and I think we cover most of that in the episode. Once again, potato quality audio from Mark but hey, it isn’t terrible.

THIS WEEK ON FROM THE VAULT we revisit episode 25 and our dive into Never Better by P.O.S. It's a great example of what this podcast does best, and we hope you dig this episode if you haven't heard it before. In the intro Mark talks a little about what's happened to P.O.S since too, specifically around the allegations made against him in 2020, his apology, and where he is now.

Original shownotes follow:

Folks, we did it. We managed to find a hip hop record that Chris Cusack enjoyed. We're fairly sure that this is one of the signs of the apocalypse so we're probably just going to end the podcast here. Thanks to everyone who listened.
Joking aside though, this is a screamer of an album. People have been drawing comparisons between punk and hip hop since...well, forever. The line between the two is drawn pretty clearly on this album. P.O.S himself was a punk kid, but growing up in the cultural and musical melting pot that is Minneapolis meant that there was a great deal of other influential music lurking just around the corner. Indeed, the diversity of the artists that come from the city is telling of the city's cultural and creative landscape. And did we mention that it was the home of Prince, perhaps one of the masters of genre-hopping?
This is P.O.S third album, and like every album before or since, it's a singular musical, tonal entity in his oeuvre. He's artist that never wants to cover the same ground twice, and whilst we all couldn't necessarily agree on if each of his records are successful at melding together as many disparate influences as this one, we all certainly agreed that this is his best work. And we all agreed that this should indeed make it into our discography of unsung classics.