hen you look at the packaging for this retrospective of Cabaret Voltaire’s earliest period, you have to wonder just how grumpy those bastards were. Charcoal, grey and white, no color used; old photos of them looking like they just killed a rival gang; and then the art from past works, which makes them look like Eastern European terrorists. Yet, the misery that is the CD case is nothing. Try listening to the actual music. Yikes.

Cabaret Voltaire were so ahead of their time they weren’t cool. You listen to their music now and think, “Man, I hear new shit like this every week, but it’s never actually this good. It’s total shit compared to this.” The team of Richard H Kirk, Stephen Mallinder and Chris Watson were a demented bunch of musical scientists bent on destroying their music before doing anything else with it. “Baader Meinhof”, for example, is the sound of all that is evil. It’s nothing more than samples of a broadcaster speaking German, with a few electronic squeaks in the background and a voice from Mars warning us that citizens of Earth will all be destroyed if we don’t praise this band as our saviors. Well, that might not be what he says, but it is that scary.

The Original Sound Of Sheffield: ‘78/’82. Best Of; (that is the proper title, in that order) is the quintessential Cabaret Voltaire companion. It collects their best, which is simply some of the most horrible sounds the human ear has ever heard, cut and pasted into genre-defining sounds this side of the cutting edge. It’s nasty and definitely not for the faint at heart. However, as ugly as it all may seem, it is beautiful because of the inspiration that is has offered so many artists of today. It’s hard to imagine musicians like Aphex Twin, Autechre and Einsternzende Nebauten without giving the nod to this trio. And while most of it focuses more on the art of noise, there are some dance numbers here that have also contributed to what we now call “Electroclash”. “Silent Command”, “Yashar” and “Nag Nag Nag” (which even has a UK club night named after it) were all made for the dancefloor, as fucked up as they all may sound.

Technically, Cabaret Voltaire were as important to modern electronic music as Kraftwerk and New Order. Maybe it’s because they were so extreme in what they did, but in all fairness, it never quite reached the levels of queasiness that Throbbing Gristle practised with—they did make it danceable, at least. The Original Sound Of Sheffield: ‘78/’82. Best Of; is a strong representation of what these pioneers were all about, which is something more than what most of us thought.