“Kraftwerk and Can had their own spaces,” Kirk says. While Ware looked to New York for inspiration, Cabaret Voltaire’s Richard H Kirk was more interested in Germany.
Photograph: Ray Stevenson/Rex/ShutterstockĬabaret Voltaire took on Western Works, another old cutlery factory, as their studio. Not so much musically, but as a template for doing your own thing.”Ĭabaret Voltaire on stage in the late 70s: the band are credited with kickstarting the Sheffield scene. “Their methodology and lifestyle was something we aspired to. “You can’t overstate how important they were.” Ware echoes this. “They were the godfathers of Sheffield’s new music,” says Simon Hinkler, who played in bands such as TV Product and Artery, as well as producing early Pulp. The pioneering industrial and electronic outfit Cabaret Voltaire had been active since 1973. “In our own little way we were imitating the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.” Bower describes it as: “Andy Warhol’s Factory in the land of Bobby Knutt.” “We were enamoured with the New York scene,” says Ware. Bower’s band 2.3 shared a space with the Future, an early incarnation of the Human League that featured Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh along with Adi Newton before he formed Clock DVA. Sheffield had plenty of dirt-cheap “little mester” workshops, once used by master craftsmen working in the city’s cutlery industry, and these provided room for bands to move in and experiment. It was a really interesting, bustling and creative time.” “There’s this myth of northern miserablism, that everything was shut down and shit,” he says. Like Cocker, he recalls the late-70s as being a time of optimism and flux. In 1977, Paul Bower was producing a local fanzine, Gun Rubber, and playing in the Buzzcocks-indebted 2.3.
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