Image
Classic Bands

Cabaret Voltaire Co-Founder Stephen Mallinder Debuts Video for “Shock to the Body”

Reality needs

Fact police

Ready for

Actuality

Cabaret Voltaire co-founder Stephen Mallinder delves into his signature sound of minimal synth, oblique wordplay, and “wonky disco” with a sensuous new single, “Shock To The Body,” out now via Dais Records. 

Mallinder’s latest single highlights his lauded place in the pantheon of electronic music while bridging the gap between Kraftwerk and The Downward Spiral-era Nine Inch Nails. The buoyant and funky track embraces a robotic industrial-meets-techno state, peppered with eerie circuits, synth noodlings, lack of reverb, and hypnotic beats. The palette of modular electronics and stereo strings is meant to channel the “temporal malaise of lockdown” with ambiguity and plasticity.

“Rhythm is the default, the bedrock, the building block – even the melodies are rhythmic….Music should draw you in; lyrics should make you think. Most interpretation is misinterpretation,” says Mallinder.

Mallinder revels in the uncertainty of interpretation of the cryptic, minimal lyrics.  “This is music of countdowns and comedowns, fleeting pleasures and opaque futures, observing the great decline while dancing on its ashes. Flux is deathless and forever; the rest, illusion.”

Recorded at MemeTune Studios in Cornwall with frequent collaborator Benge (aka Ben Edwards), “Shock To The Body” will certainly get into your nervous system and rewire your circuitry.

The music video was created frame by frame by Tulipomania and includes stop-motion objects and collages on thousands of individual sheets of black paper. The effect works beautifully with the hypnotic nature of the song, and its artistic throwback approach to animation brings to mind the work of Terry Gilliam.

Watch below:

“Shock to the Body” is featured on Stephen Mallinder’s latest LP, tick tick tick, out now via Dais Records.

Order Here

Stephen Mallinder is also set to make an appearance at this year’s Substance Festival in Los Angeles. More info here.

Follow Stephen Mallinder:

Alice Teeple

Alice Teeple is a photographer, multidisciplinary artist, and writer. She is not in Tin Machine.

Recent Posts

  • Art

Darkwave Trio Corlyx Colour Outside The Lines in Their New Single “Zombie Kid” — Plus Announce New Album “Purple Pain”

Darkwave trio Corlyx is a band that boldly colors outside the lines of traditional genre conventions, redefining the contours and…

18 hours ago
  • Art

French Synth Act Minuit Machine Returns With the Video for Their Resilient New Single “Hold Me”

They way they tore me apart Like I’m a corpse they wanna ditch They way they sold me for parts…

20 hours ago
  • Bands

Ballerinas Twirl in the Video for Los Angeles Post-Punk Artist Indiana Bradley’s Luminous New Single “Silent Moon”

It is a quiet devastation, a weight that presses without end. The realization unfolds not in a sharp moment but…

2 days ago
  • Song Premiere

Karolina Bnv Reimagines Classic New Beat with “Germany Calling”

In the history of new beat, there are few more memorable samples than "Germany calling." Taken from a Lord Haw-Haw…

2 days ago
  • Bands

Stella Rose Debuts Video for Smoldering Alt-Rock Anthem “HOLLYBABY”

Today, New York City's rising singer-songwriter Stella Rose drops her latest single and lyric video for HOLLYBABY, the title track…

3 days ago
  • Bands

Kim Deal Serenades a Flamingo in Her Surreal Video for “Nobody Love You More”

Perfect hosts and room ghosts shout I don't care what they say They can fight it out I mean to…

3 days ago
Sticky Footer Banner with Close Button