Das Kabinette

Biography

Das Kabinette were a British 1980s minimal synth band. While students at Blackpool Art College in 1981, Dave, Craig and Mick quickly discovered a shared interest in music and old English pubs. In no time, their shared student accommodation became a clutter of instruments beneath a nest of wires and recording equipment. Later, armed with hard-earned student grant cheques, they booked recording time at the local Sunset Sound Studios. Blending synthesizers & drum machine with guitars, Das Kabinette...

Das Kabinette were a British 1980s minimal synth band. While students at Blackpool Art College in 1981, Dave, Craig and Mick quickly discovered a shared interest in music and old English pubs. In no time, their shared student accommodation became a clutter of instruments beneath a nest of wires and recording equipment. Later, armed with hard-earned student grant cheques, they booked recording time at the local Sunset Sound Studios. Blending synthesizers & drum machine with guitars, Das Kabinette was born.

A second visit to the studio in 1983 produced The Cabinet and the remixed Fudge It (a college term meaning to cheat). The band's shared a fascination for the German Expressionist film "The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari" formed the inpiration for the demo. Dave created the sleeve artwork (Dave’s wife, Sara, is ‘Jane’ on the cover and Mick posed as Cesare) and Craig organised the pressing of 500 vinyl singles on their own Klosette Records label. Over many months, they touted The Cabinet to club and radio DJs and sent copies to largely unreceptive A&R departments, yet found a friend in BBC Radio 1’s Janice Long who aired it on several occasions.

A primitive self-produced college video of The Cabinet features as 'Jane', a college friend who became the long-time girlfriend of Gary Numan shortly after filming. After hearing a further demo he invited the band to record their next session at Rock City Studio in Shepperton during the embryonic days of his Numa label.

On leaving college, now with full-time jobs and regular pay cheques, they continued sporadic recording sessions at Cavalier Studios, near Manchester, until a completed album, Sexual Desert, emerged in 1986, but never saw a release until February 2008 when some of the songs appeared on the Spy Thriller album released on Minimal Wave.

With the advent of more modern equipment and sampling, the band's music was drifting away from the Das Kabinette identity, so they became Dangerous Ground from 1987 to 1991.

As a pastime, Mick [UTRONIC] and Dave [THE TEST CHAMBER] continue to record a wealth of solo projects and together as MUTANT SUITS for the sheer enjoyment of creating new music, which has never ceased to thrill. Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.