Minimal Wave Records

We’re honored to pre­sent a 12” EP of tracks from the archives of Shef­field based electronic music legend Ric­hard H. Kirk, en­tit­led “Never Lose Your Shadow”. Kirk first came to pro­min­ence in the 1970s as a mem­b­er of the semi­n­al in­dustri­al band Cabaret Vol­taire. His first re­lease as a solo art­ist, Dis­pos­able Half-Truths, came out in 1980 on Throbb­ing Gristle’s In­dustri­al Re­cords label and since then he de­veloped a solo care­er para­llel to the band until its dis­solu­tion in 1994.

On the EP, we com­pile tracks original­ly re­cor­ded bet­ween 1978 and 1987, which have never be­fore been re­leased on vinyl. The title track, ‘Never Lose Your Shadow’ blurs the lines bet­ween harsh in­dustri­al, dance floor, and no wave. This is one we’ve been play­ing out for a while now and won­der­ing why it hadn’t been pre­ssed on vinyl. The other three tracks are more ex­periment­al and re­fer­ence ideas Kirk was ex­plor­ing in Cabaret Vol­taire at the time. When asked specifical­ly about this col­lec­tion, Kirk ex­plains that “none of the tracks were out­takes for Cabaret Vol­taire, they were al­ways solo tracks, al­though I think ‘Never Lose Your Shadow’ was vey much a bluep­rint for the materi­al that Cabaret Vol­taire re­cor­ded for Vir­gin / Some Bi­zar­re bet­ween 1983-85. The minim­al sequenc­er / drum mac­hine loc­kdown that I used later for Cabaret Vol­taire was pioneered on this track. Lyrical­ly, ‘Never Lose Your Shadow’ was in­spired by the 1971 speed freak road movie ‘Van­ish­ing Point’, amongst other th­ings.”

The EP is li­mited to 999 hand-numbered co­p­ies, the first 500 are pre­ssed on solid grey vinyl and the re­maind­er on black. Note: the re­lease date has been chan­ged to Sep­temb­er 16th, 2014, with pre-orders com­menc­ing on August 22nd.

Speci­al thanks to Mute for ag­ree­ing to li­cen­se this group of tracks.

Read more about the philoso­phy of Ric­hard H. Kirk, as documen­ted in the fol­low­ing quotes from an in­ter­view con­duc­ted by Rich Thomas, original­ly pub­lished in Mag­netic in 2011:

“I don’t go back and re-polish stuff. I don’t con­cep­tual­ize it too much. I leave that to other peo­ple af­terwards.”

“You’re eith­er going to get in your face hard house, tran­ce or whatev­er they’re call­ing it this week, or you’re going to get stuff that’s total­ly chil­led with­out any beats. The roots of downtem­po have been for­gott­en.”

“I have this pro­blem with my label. If I want to put out a re­lease, the dis­tributors are going to want some­th­ing in writ­ing that con­nects that re­lease to me, so my al­iases are kinda fuc­ked in that way. On one hand I’d like to be more ob­scure, but con­di­tions are di­ctat­ing that maybe some of these th­ings would­n’t end up being manu­fac­tured and re­leased.”

“I can’t write music. I can’t notate music down in notes in a way that it can be trans­cribed as sheet music. That’s why Cabaret Vol­taire re­cor­ded every­th­ing to tape in the mid-Seventies.”

“I love ac­cidents; I got all that from Brian Eno. I re­memb­er going to a lec­ture of Eno’s in the mid-Seventies when he did this tour. He il­lustrated his lec­ture by play­ing two or three pieces of music—one of them was “What’s Goes On” by the Vel­vet Un­derground—and he talks through this piece about how Lou Reed has three at­tempts to play this guitar solo throug­hout the track, and of co­ur­se he fucks it up each time. But it sounds cool. I’ve al­ways tried to stick with that philoso­phy. With fully di­git­al edit­ing, I can get rid of the ac­cidents if I wan­ted to, but I tend not to.”

“I don’t be­lieve in viol­ence, but when you get peo­ple’s voice say­ing “We don’t this war,” and then you’re just ig­nored…”

“I don’t dif­feren­tiate bet­ween short and long tracks. It’s all the same to me. The in­spira­tion for doing long tracks came from li­sten­ing to th­ings like In­dian music and “Sist­er Ray” by the Vel­vet Un­derground.”

“Com­put­er tech­nology has re­volutionized music in gener­al, not just electronic music. The shifts in electronic music have been gover­ned by the mac­hines; the boxes.”

“A lot of electronic music is tain­ted by drug scenarios. If I li­st­en to a piece of Mozart, it doesn’t make me think of rav­ing. Whereas when you li­st­en to con­tem­pora­ry th­ings that have come from that cul­ture, you think, “Oh no, it’s that again. This is going to work on the whole MDMA com­edown scenario.””

“There was a fus­ion band from America in the Sevent­ies cal­led McKendree Spr­ing. They had this in­strument­al track cal­led “God Bless The Con­spira­cy,” and they went to prison for it. I thought that was quite potent. That a piece of music could be ban­ned in the West pure­ly be­cause if its title, be­cause there were no words.”

“This is the han­gov­er from the acid house rave thing. Wherev­er you go, fuck­ers just want four on the floor.”

“In the cul­ture I grew up in­—work­ing class cul­ture—everyone drank tea. My mot­her’s 85 and she still drinks ten cups of tea a day. I’m a co­ffee freak. I like Italian espres­so. It gets the work done with­out the com­edown you get from other stimulants.”

“A lot of the polit­ical side to music went by the by in the Eight­ies be­cause it was a very greedy time. After punk it be­came fas­hion­able to like money again. I think the polit­ical edge was blun­ted. I think it hap­pened with the rave thing as well. A lot of peo­ple for­got about politics and just wan­ted to be danc­ing with loads of other peo­ple in a field, which is kind of polit­ical in it­self.”

“Jean Paul Sartre has this phrase cal­led ‘the Against.’ If you’re an art­ist, you’re in a posi­tion to chal­lenge the fuck­ing status quo. That’s where I’m com­ing from. That’s the job of an art­ist in society. It’s not to paint pre­tty pic­tures. It’s to say some­th­ing, even if it’s only ‘Fuck you.’”

“I got off the dole in 1979. It was just after the Mix-Up album had come out. We’d got a check for £4,000. That was the day it was de­cided that Mal­lind­er and myself would go full-time with Cabaret Vol­taire.”

“Cabaret Vol­taire was sup­port­ing the Buzzcocks in 1978, play­ing for 2,000 hos­tile punk rock­ers. We got spat at, we got th­ings thrown at us, but I al­ways thought it wasn’t so bad. The Buzzcocks ac­tual­ly got an iron bar thrown at them and they were the head­lin­ing band. But that’s what it was like back then. I think Suicide got the same treat­ment when they were sup­port­ing The Clash. I still re­memb­er that like it was yes­terday.”

“I DJ from time to time—­foolish­ly I allow myself to be per­suaded to do this—and I’ve had peo­ple come up and com­plain about the music. I thought peo­ple com­plain­ing to the DJ about the music went out in the Sevent­ies.”

“I don’t rea­l­ly have much of a soci­al life these days. I only rea­l­ly exist through music. I don’t go to clubs much an­ymore, as it’s full of rea­l­ly young kids. Peo­ple just think you’re a drug de­al­er. I got mis­tak­en for a cop in a club once. I was fuck­ing in­sul­ted, man.”

“Apart from in Japan in 1981—where we did have a lot of teenage school­girls chas­ing us around from place to place—­Cabaret Vol­taire never got group­ies. It was very stran­ge. Most of them were guys who were in­teres­ted in the equip­ment. I’ve been in a re­lationship since 1978, so I would­n’t have taken ad­vantage of it an­yway. I’m too honor­able a guy to do that…Or maybe I’m just stupid, I don’t know.”

“I don’t know wheth­er I have any ar­tistic re­spon­sibil­ity other than to myself.”

Catch Ric­hard H. Kirk play­ing live as Cabaret Vol­taire for the first time in 20 years, at Be­rlin’s Aton­al Fes­tiv­al on August 24th.