"Mix-Up" is Cabaret Voltaire's debut and, not surprisingly, it's their least accessible album. Even though they ended up essentially founding the genre of industrial even casual contemporary industrial listeners are bound to feel alienated by this album at some point. "Mix-Up" is proto-proto industrial, to use as much critic jargon as I can.
The beats on this album are far more expansive and meandering than the tight, percussive, tones of industrial we're all familiar with today. The industrial nature of these tracks is found in the repetition and darkness rather than the production or tempo. Compare "Mix-Up" era sounds of Cabaret to bands like Suicide, especially on the organ-filled track "No Escape".
The marching, clockwork quality of industrial has not arrived yet at the time of "Mix-Up" but listeners can hear its beginnings in tracks like "Kirilian Photograph" which sounds, in its cadence, like the chugging of a demented locomotive.
While it's far less listenable than compilations like "Best Of 78/82" it does serve as arguably one of the first industrial albums and that's got to count for something.
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