soundcloud.com/billie-ray-martin/the-crackdown-project-minimix

Billie Ray Martin covers "The Crackdown" and "Just Fascination". According to Wire interview Mallinder is doing vocals on official releases due this month and March.

The downloads linked to above are pretty cool.

They do sound good, gt3. Not heard of anyone trying to cover the Cabs in this way before.

They are good aren't they wingco? I'm looking forward to the official releases. It's a great idea and I think her jazz inflected voice brings a whole new dimension to the originals. Often cover versions are kind of pointless - like Chromatics "Running Up That Hill". What exactly does a fey voiced female singing that song bring to our understanding of the original that the original fey voiced female hadn't already brought to the party so to speak...

Wingco, his mate Michael and I were chatting about this at the weekend. (At the C&W club, GT - you should have been there!)

Personally, I've never been much of a fan of Billie Ray Martin's voice, but it's far from the worst out there. More of a concern is that, since Kirk was persuaded to start using the Cabaret Voltaire moniker again and Mallinder - perhaps in a tit-for-tat move - has done the same, it might mean some kind of legal escalation over use of the name. Allegedly, relations between the two men is at an all-time low, following Kirk's new CV stuff: they haven't spoken to each other in probably years now, despite the fact that Mallinder was back in the country for a spell a year or two ago, lecturing/researching down at Brighton Uni. All quite unfortunate.

Regarding vocal interpretations, I always got the impression that Mallinder's 'breathy' vocal style was an attempt to remain a little androgynous and non-macho. Thus, I'm not surprised that female vocals can work with their old stuff.

It's not quite 'inside info', but there is a constant - if small - stream of mail exchanges over on the Yahoo Groups Cabaret Voltaire mailing list:

launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/cabaretvoltaire/

It's members only, but it's quite worthwhile. All this stuff was discussed (a little) over there a few weeks ago. (I can't remember if you two are on there already, GT & Wingco! Are you?)

yeah ..

clive is probably right to be a little concerned re the internal politics between the boys as i suspect he's right that stephen has done this to have a pop @ RHK (and didn't we, as in you and i clive, get confirmation from amrik that RHK was now the legal owner of the CV name, and that Stephen signed it over a few years ago ?), but damn, i'm enjoying this.

ta for the tip off.

I'm listening to these three tracks lots and really enjying them. From what I can work out, it's all being released as Billie Ray Martin rather than CV so that probably gets around any legal issues - the real question would be who holds the intellectual propert in the work it self and would therefore be able to give permission for the titles and any samples to be used.

Hello marke - haven't heard from you for a while!

www.youtube.com/user/billieraymart

www.youtube.com/user/PhilRetroSpector

Some more remixes - of 'Just Fascination' - courtesy of The Wire.