In the steel-boned industrialized city where soot once sang and factories hummed, Stephen ‘Mal’ Mallinder and Chris Watson return to celebrate five decades of avant-garde provocation. On October 25th, at Sheffield’s FORGE Warehouse, the duo will commemorate the innovative pulse of Cabaret Voltaire, an announcement that comes exactly fifty years since the group’s inaugural gig at the Sheffield Students Union Refectory—a night reportedly ending with equal parts confrontation and curiosity.
That initial performance on May 13th, 1975, saw the then-trio assaulting their student audience with collaged noise, barked slogans, and Super 8 projections. Some recoiled; others were roused. Either way, the ripples have yet to settle.
Half a century after that first feedback-laden encounter, Cabaret Voltaire returns home amid a cultural climate steeped in deceit and algorithmic agitation. Their early works feel less like dated dispatches from a bygone era and more like urgent field notes for today—audio, text, tape loops, and found footage still resonating powerfully.
The forthcoming performance at the Sensoria Festival on October 25th promises a curated collision, reclaiming Cabaret Voltaire’s radical ethos. Mallinder and Watson will deliver a set spanning the group’s expansive legacy—from lo-fi bedroom agitprop to Rough Trade releases, Factory flirtations, Doublevision’s DIY video experiments, and collaborations with dub visionary Adrian Sherwood and Chicago house innovator Marshall Jefferson.
“The live set is built from scratch but faithful to the original tracks,” says Stephen Mallinder. “Everything has been painstakingly reconstructed with the original technology and processes to build the tracks. But as with all Cabs live shows there is an element of unpredictable, the new. Chance meets causality.”
“I’m delighted and totally thrilled to make a contribution to the band’s 50th anniversary,” says Chris Watson. “To share a stage once more with Mal and to honour Cabaret Voltaire’s legacy will be a unique privilege, whilst remembering that in the current times – as back then – the Dadaist interventions of Cabaret Voltaire remain essential.”
Tonight, May 13, the Sensoria Festival commemorates the anniversary of that first performance with CV50, a special event at Gut Level in Sheffield featuring performances by aya, as well as emerging Sheffield artists MYNA and Alex.Aubyn.
Events celebrating the 50th anniversary continue on May 16 with “50 Years of Sonic Shock,” featuring live performances by Russell Haswell, Prangers, and Synth Club. Special talks and an exhibition run from May 15 to May 18.
Stephen Mallinder will join Jamie Taylor and Travis Elborough for a conversation on May 14 during the launch of Taylor’s book, Studio Electrophonique.
Tickets for the Cabaret Voltaire performance on October 25th go on sale at noon on Wednesday, May 14.
You can purchase them here and here.
Cabaret Voltaire was initially active from 1973 to 1994, featuring Chris Watson until 1981 and Stephen Mallinder until 1994. The group remained inactive for two decades until Richard H. Kirk, the only remaining member, revived it with a performance at Berlin’s Atonal festival in 2014. Thereafter, a series of interconnected releases—including *Shadow of Fear*, *BN9Drone*, and *Dekadrone*—were launched in 2020 and 2021, before Kirk’s untimely passing in autumn 2021.
Both Mallinder and Watson have stated that there will be no new recordings under the Cabaret Voltaire name.
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