Richard H. Kirk: Shadow of Fear/Dekadrone/BN9drone

This morning came the terrible news of the death, at age 65, of Richard H. Kirk, who I have listened to and admired deeply for thirty-five years.  This innovator of electronic music, beginning with Cabaret Voltaire in 1973 and including a staggeringly productive solo career, featuring many, many aliases, always put the music first and, for those who know, his body of work and his legacy is not just massive in scope and scale, but impressive in its diversity and ingenuity.

It had been planned to soon highlight on this blog Kirk's remarkable return as Cabaret Voltaire through the release through Mute Records in fall 2020 of the great album, Shadow of Fear, followed this past spring with the issuing of the drone recordings, Dekadrone and BN9drone.  This trio showed that there was no diminution of RHK's forward-thinking, yet past-respecting, talents with the recordings made, by virtue of the failure of (somewhat) newer recording equipment, with old-school technology, but sounding fresh and vital now.

For months after receiving Shadow of Fear, that album was being listened to very regularly and such tracks as "The Power (Of Their Knowledge)," "Night of the Jackal," and "Universal Energy" being particularly powerful and compelling, though the recording is strong from start to finish.  Whatever criticism Kirk received for reviving the name in 2010 without longtime collaborator Stephen Mallinder, whose tweet this morning expressed concisely that relationship between the two, he deserves eternal credit for releasing a record that built off the past while moving resolutely forward.

The Dekadrone and BN9drone albums are also really interesting offshoots of what he did in putting Shadow of Fear together and, in this pandemic environment with climate change making its visceral impact fully clear, these unsettling excursions into the netheworld of electronic manipulation are relevant soundtracks to the upheavals and uncertainties that are emblematic of these times.

Today is definitely a time to delve deeply into these sound worlds formed by a highly creative and particularly singular artist whose uncompromising devotion to his sonic architecture is deserving of so much more attention than he has received.  Since 1986, when I put CV's Drinking Gasoline EP on the turntable and then spent days trying to wrap my young head around what was being projected through the speakers, I've regularly listened, absorbed and enjoyed the unique musical vision of Richard H. Kirk, who was influenced by so many, including the masters of dub like the late Lee "Scratch" Perry, who will be featured in the next post.

Kirk lives on through his remarkable music spanning close to a half-century and let's hope that he will continue to be heard and appreciated in all his diversity, aliases, and prodigious output.

Cabaret Voltaire: Shadow of Fear

 As an admirer of this group for thirty-five years, I pre-ordered this album, the first under the name in over a quarter-century, from the great Mute Records as soon as it was announced last summer and received it just before Thanksgiving.  I wanted time to give the album several listens before highlighting it here, but Shadow of Fear has been a constant listen, especially in the last month or so.  Whatever qualms some fans have had about this being a Richard H. Kirk solo vehicle, his point that the other members, Christopher Watson and Stephen Mallinder, chose to leave and the fact that he has carefully, and very effectively, curated the band's output for many years is all that needs to be said.

As for this record, with its reliance on old equipment after a computer crash, it is both redolent of a variety of hallmarks of CV from the past (the drum machine from "Nag, Nag, Nag," or certain keyboard touches and "electro" drums from the mid-Eighties, and electronic sounds from the first half the following decade, much less the ominous voice samples tuned lower for even more of a sense of dread and mystery.)  Yet, as Kirk was clear to say in interviews, this is also forward-looking in that is new and very strong material.

Favorites here include "The Power (Of Their Knowledge)," "Night of the Jackal," and "Universal Energy," though all the pieces are excellent in their own way and the sequencing is such that the album moves smoothly from one track to the next and the variety keeps the attention locked in.  There's been a lot of comment about how the recording is apt and fitting for our COVID-19 pandemic environment, though Kirk pointed out that most of the work was done well before the outbreak and that his tendencies toward paranoiac musical musings seem more timely.

In any case, Shadow of Fear is a great album and another monument to Kirk's admirable and relentless focus on forging ahead and not dwelling too much on the past, which acknowledging antecedents in Cabaret Voltaire's long history.  He has just released a three-track EP, Shadow of Funk, and announced a pair of upcoming drone projects, Dekadrone, out on 26 March, and BN9Drone, released on 26 April and both available by pre-order now.  So, we'll see how the obviously inspired Kirk continues the retooled CV project!