Here's a good way to tell whether or not you should buy The Original Sound of Sheffield: look at your music collection. See any Cabs albums? If you already own a couple, go ahead and add this one to your collection. If your CD rack is conspicuously lacking in Cabaret Voltaire, and particularly if you've never heard them before, you might want to snag a copy of Red Mecca instead. That's certainly not a jab at the Cabs -- it's a simple matter of serving expectations. If you want to understand why Cabaret Voltaire is such an influential group, you should grab a disc from the tail end of this five-year stretch; if you want to know how they actually got to that point, The Original Sound's collection of hard-to-find singles and album tracks will allow you to trace their evolution from low-tech electronic punks to ground-breaking pioneers.

Like such contemporaries as Throbbing Gristle and Fad Gadget, Cabaret Voltaire's early work bears little resemblance to the 21st century standard of electronic music; we're talking ultra-primitive gear, cumbersome tape-loops and a production aesthetic that was equal parts punk's DIY determination and dub's shoestring innovation. You'll hear a lot of punk influence in these early songs -- particularly "Nag Nag Nag", which in a minor miracle of trend convergence sounds like it was written and recorded last week in a Brooklyn loft. There's also plenty of the kind of abstract, contained, dissonant noise we all take for granted today -- it's par for the course in everything from Sonic Youth to alt-rap, but in those days even punks pegged it as difficult listening.

You can still hear the Cabs' punk-rock edge in tracks like "Spread the Virus", but time and technology are eroding it; as of Red Mecca, we're only a few months away from Chris Watson's departure. The angular electro-funk of "Sensoria" isn't even a twinkle in Richard Kirk and Stephen Mallinder's eyes, but it's coming. In retrospect, 1982 was the Cabs' golden year.

Not all of the band's ideas and attitudes have aged well; the indulgent artsiness of their sociopolitical commentary would be downright embarrassing in our post-CNN global village. Still, Cabaret Voltaire's music is essential. There are definitely better places to begin your exploration of their sound, but The Original Sound will readily indulge a more thorough investigation.