Cabaret Voltaire’s US Tour Brings CODE Back Into Circulation

Cabaret Voltaire has spent 2026 re-entering spaces the group might have left behind. Following the death of Richard H. Kirk, few would have expected Stephen Mallinder to tour again, let alone alongside Chris Watson, who departed in the 1980s. Yet those two have already completed a sold-out European run and are now back in the United States for dates built around the reissue of CODE, the group’s 1987 album.

The live document But What Time Is It Really?, drawn from UK shows including Sheffield, captures the current set. Mallinder describes audiences as a mix of long-time followers and younger listeners, and the material carries an edge that fits the present. The songs don’t simply repeat their recorded forms; the performances sharpen them without flattening their history.

That history has rarely been separate from politics. Mallinder notes that the current US climate did raise questions before the tour, though the dates have been uneventful compared with the provocations of the Mussolini Headkick era, when skinhead confrontations were part of the risk. In San Francisco, he points to a visible presence of trans and gay audiences as a sign of what the room can still hold.

Benge joins Mallinder on this leg, keeping the group’s electronic language alive without turning the tour into a heritage exercise.