I Speak Machine, the audio-visual collaboration between musician Tara Busch and filmmaker Maf Lewis, has a long relationship with synth pioneer Gary Numan, having repeatedly opened for him since 2015, including extensive touring in 2022. Onstage, Busch is the visible component of that collaboration, singing, dancing, and commanding a battery of synthesizers while Lewis’ visuals accompany the performance.
I previously saw Busch perform with synth-pop act Blancmange at Cruel World 2025, playing keyboards and singing backing vocals alongside Neil Arthur during the band’s first North American appearance in 39 years. I’ve long been a fan of Blancmange, so it was thrilling to see Arthur bring those songs to life with Busch’s assistance. She absolutely nailed the music.
So when I entered the Howard Theatre for a recent performance by the groundbreaking Cabaret Voltaire, I had no idea I was about to witness another similar turn by Busch, once again taking a synthesizer station alongside one of Britain’s great electronic music pioneers.
Formed in Sheffield, England, in 1973 by Stephen Mallinder, Richard H. Kirk, and Chris Watson, Cabaret Voltaire helped establish the vocabulary of industrial and electronic music through tape loops, primitive synthesizers, manipulated sounds, and conventional instruments used in distinctly unconventional ways. Kirk, who remained vital to the project throughout much of its history, died in 2021.
Given that Cabaret Voltaire rarely toured the United States, it seemed unlikely American audiences would ever see this music performed again. But Mallinder and Watson reunited for live performances in the U.K. in 2025, and Mallinder subsequently brought the music to North America on the Final USA + Canada Tour. Watson did not make the North American dates, leaving Mallinder as the sole founding member onstage.
Watch a music video for “Why Kill Time (When You Can Kill Yourself)?” by Cabaret Voltaire on YouTube:
Busch stepped into Watson’s position, while Mallinder rounded out the quartet with Eric Random on keyboards and guitar and Ben “Benge” Edwards on percussion and keyboards. Random’s relationship with Cabaret Voltaire stretches back to around 1980, when he toured and recorded with members of the group, making him a particularly appropriate choice to help reconstruct the music associated with Kirk.
Benge, meanwhile, is an electronic musician, producer, and vintage-synth enthusiast who owns Memetune Studios and operates Memetune Recordings. He and Mallinder also play together in Wrangler, which released its debut album in 2014.
In other words, assembling this version of Cabaret Voltaire was no casual exercise. The lineup was built with a deep understanding of the band’s history, and the results at the Howard were astounding.
Cabaret Voltaire’s music may be rooted in experimentation, but the band also produced some remarkably engrossing dance music. My own interest in MTV-era British music allowed me to scratch the surface of that in the ’80s, when I became aware of 1984’s Micro-Phonies and its singles.
The Howard Theatre show hit that sweet spot for me. Cabaret Voltaire dug heavily into 1983’s The Crackdown with “24/24,” “Why Kill Time (When You Can Kill Yourself),” “Crackdown,” and “Just Fascination.” These songs are certainly danceable, but beneath those funky, machine-driven grooves lie recurring themes of anxiety and alienation that made the music seem both distinctly of its Cold War era and oddly appropriate today.
The three-song encore reached even deeper into the band’s history with the raw 1979 single “Nag Nag Nag,” followed by “I Want You” and finally “Sensoria,” perhaps Cabaret Voltaire’s best-known collision of experimentation and the dance floor. (With “Sensoria,” Cabaret Voltaire flirted with the mainstream! Ferris Bueller had a Micro-Phonies poster hanging on his bedroom wall.)
Watch Cabaret Voltaire perform “Sensoria” live for KEXP on YouTube:
As fascinating as the history is, however, the whole enterprise needed a true original at its center, and Mallinder was a powerful presence at the Howard Theatre. Stately, theatrical, and somber, Mal delivered his vocals in that familiar detached, deadpan baritone, perfectly attuned to music that could sound vaguely menacing one moment and refreshingly funky the next.
It was an extraordinary performance.
The tour is billed as Cabaret Voltaire’s final North American run, so perhaps Washington truly has seen the last of them. If so, the Howard Theatre provided a fitting farewell. More than 50 years after Cabaret Voltaire began dismantling conventional ideas about how music should be made, Mallinder and company demonstrated that the sounds they helped invent still feel remarkably alive.
Tara with I Speak Machine opened the show! Catch photos of the her set below.
Here are some photos of Cabaret Voltaire performing live at the Howard Theatre on Sept. 23, 2026. All pictures by Mickey McCarter.
Here are some photos of I Speak Machine performing live at Howard Theatre on Sept. 23, 2026. All pictures by Mickey McCarter.
