Richard H Kirk
Musical pioneer celebrated for his work with Cabaret Voltaire
RICHARD H KIRK, who has died aged 65, was a musician whose work with Cabaret Voltaire was a direct inspiration for the dance explosion of the 1980s; he went on to release dozens of records under almost as many pseudonyms, becoming a revered elder statesman of the electronic music scene, and what became known as Industrial Music.
Richard Harold Kirk was born in Sheffield on March 21 1956. His was a politically aware family, and he attended Young Communist League meetings with his father. For a time he was a skinhead and soul boy and got into dub reggae.
In the early 1970s, initially inspired by the sonic experiments of Brian Eno, he teamed up with Chris Watson, a telephone engineer who shared his enthusiasm for playing around with electronic equipment. They worked with tape loops and oscillators to build up sound collages, to which Kirk added conventional (though processed and distorted) instruments, particularly clarinet and guitar. They brought in Stephen Mallinder, an old skinhead friend of Kirk, to add bass guitar and vocals.
They developed a technique of using two synthesisers to process sounds and vocals, and a drum machine; they often added “found” voices from radio and television. It all began to add up to what the Sounds writer Jon Savage described as “a cool yet harsh throb, slivers of sound slowly edging their way under your skin”.
To counteract any danger of sterility, Kirk told Savage, “we try to be as spontaneous as possible and get down as quick as possible what we’re feeling.”
Taking their name from the Zurich nightclub that gave birth to Dadaism, Cabaret Voltaire established themselves as a musical force in their city. But Kirk denied that they were trying to convey the noise of the industrial North in the way that the sounds of the West Midlands factories seeped into heavy metal: “It was grim, Sheffield, but it was the boredom it created that prompted us to start the band.”
At their first gig, in 1975, the crowd, thinking they were going to hear a conventional band, rioted; it was an experience with which Cabaret Voltaire would become familiar.
A Sheffield scene began to coalesce, including the likes of Human League (and their offshoot, Heaven 17). In 1978 Cabaret Voltaire set up Western Works, a rehearsal and recording studio in what had been the offices of the Sheffield Federation of Young Socialists. They were slated to appear on the Industrial label run by Throbbing Gristle, but a lack of money meant that they ended up on Rough Trade, releasing their debut album, Mix-up, in 1979, shortly after one of their best-known singles, Nag Nag Nag.
More albums followed, then in 1981 Watson departed, going on to become a sound recordist whose work has regularly featured on BBC Radio 4.
Kirk and Mallinder pursued a more commercial path, and were even on the verge of breaking through to the mainstream (they were the first band to play at the Haçienda in Manchester). Though that did not happen – despite underground hits like Sensoria (1984) – they were a key influence on the dance scene that exploded in the second half of the 1980s.
Kirk and Mallinder parted company in 1995; Kirk went on to record under his own name as well as under dozens of pseudonyms, most notably Sandoz, and from 2009 he began using the Cabaret Voltaire name again. Mallinder described him as “stubborn, no sufferer of fools, but insightful, spontaneous, and with vision … and underneath the spiky shell a warm heart.”
A few years ago Kirk was offered “a very f------ large amount of money” by the organisers of the Coachella Festival to reassemble the original line-up, but he refused, saying: “I’d feel like a permanent relic.”
Richard H Kirk was married, but information about his survivors was unavailable.