The 1987 album returns remastered on Mute, out October 9th

Mute is putting CODE, Cabaret Voltaire’s eighth studio album, back into print on October 9th, remastered and pressed on limited “CODIFIED” marble vinyl, alongside a deluxe triple CD carrying two extra discs of period remixes and previously unreleased archive material. The 1987 record, produced by Adrian Sherwood, marked the point where Richard H Kirk and Stephen Mallinder signed to EMI. Two of its singles, “Don’t Argue” and “Here To Go,” reached the UK Official Singles Chart, making it the band’s most commercial release. New sleeve notes quote Mallinder describing the album as a record of a technological shift that turned out political almost by accident. Decades on, it still holds up as some of the most paranoid, tightly wound dance music Britain produced in the 1980s.

Title: CODE
Artist: Cabaret Voltaire
Release Date: 2026-10-09
Genres: Electronica, Experimental Music, Industrial Music, Techno
Label: Mute Records
Description: Mute reissues Cabaret Voltaire's 1987 album CODE on marble vinyl and triple CD October 9th, as the band's final North American tour opens.

The reissue lands in the middle of the band’s last North American tour, whose second leg opens September 11th in Dallas, their first date there in over thirty years, and runs through Austin’s Levitation festival, Chicago, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, New York and Philadelphia. The live lineup pairs Mallinder on vocals, bass, keyboards and samples with Benge on keyboards and electronic drums and Eric Random on keyboards and guitar; Tara Busch covers keyboards and samples and is standing in for Chris Watson. I Speak Machine, the Busch-Random project, supports every date. Busch has called the band a longtime influence on her own work and described the fill-in role as a chance to get an insider’s look at how the songs were actually built.

A live album, But What Time Is It Really?, came out earlier in 2026, drawn from a sold-out UK tour the previous year that fell fifty years after the band’s first ever show, played at the Sheffield Students Union Refectory on May 13th, 1975. That lineup had Mallinder and Watson joined by Random and Oliver Harrap.

Cabaret Voltaire started in Sheffield in 1973, when Mallinder, Kirk and Watson took the name from the Zürich club tied to early Dada, and spent their first years splicing tape loops and staging confrontational street performances that helped define industrial music. They signed to Rough Trade in 1978 and built their own Western Works studio the year before. Watson left in 1981; Mallinder and Kirk carried on until the band went dormant in 1994. Kirk brought the name back alone in 2009 and performed with it, solo, at Berlin Atonal in 2014, releasing Shadow of Fear, Dekadrone and BN9Drone between 2020 and 2021 before he died in September 2021 at 65. Mallinder and Watson have said no new studio material will follow under the Cabaret Voltaire name.

Notes on sourcing: the release gives no catalogue number, price or track list for the CODE reissue. Oliver Harrap’s instrument or role is never specified in the source material and he does not appear on Wikipedia’s entry for the band, so it is left out here. Adrian Sherwood’s production credit, and the Bill Nelson and Mark Brydon session credits on CODE, come from Wikipedia rather than the press release. The October UK and Ireland tour dates listed in the release are omitted, since the piece focuses on the North American run.

Cabaret Voltaire Final tour dates:

September 11 – Dallas, TX – Granada Theater^
September 12 – Austin, TX – Levitation
September 15 – Chicago, IL – Metro^
September 16 – Chicago, IL – Metro^
September 18 – Toronto, ON – Phoenix Concert Theatre^
September 19 – Montreal, QC – Sat^
September 21 – Boston, MA – The Wilbur^
September 25 – New York, NY – Knockdown Center^
September 26 – Philadelphia, PA – Underground Arts^

October 7 – Dublin, The Academy
October 8 – Belfast, Limelight
October 10 – Birmingham, Town Hall*
October 11 – Liverpool, Arts Club*
October 13 – Nottingham, Rock City>
October 14 – Cardiff, The Globe>
October 15 – Bath, Forum*
October 17 – Newcastle, Boiler Shop*
October 18 – Glasgow, Barrowland*
 October 19 – Manchester, Albert Hall*
October 21 – Bexhill, De La Warr Pavilion*
October 22  – London, Roundhouse*
October 25 – Sheffield, Octagon*

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