Live music review: Peter Hook, Cabaret Voltaire thrilled at Far Out Lounge for Levitation 2026
I like to think of myself as a diehard rock and roll lover who does what she can to see and do all the things. Sometimes that’s easy and sometimes life gets in the way. Be it money problems, work schedules, personal issues, you name it, they come up as reasons not to leave the house, much less attend a music festival, but when it’s one of your favorite festivals, Levitation which took place last weekend in Austin, you find a way to rally.
I rallied in a very half-assed way compared to rest of The Cosmic Clash team, but as we discussed who was covering what, it made me happy to choose a couple of great acts from Saturday, September 12; Peter Hook & the Light and Cabaret Voltaire.
I had big Robert Smith hair throughout middle school and high school, and loved a lot of new wave, punk, post-punk, and other defining genres that I didn’t understand at the time, but the late (& great) Dave Kendall brought directly into my house thanks to MTV’s Post Modern and 120 Minutes shows.
I loved New Order, but I didn’t love Joy Division. Yup. You read that correctly. I didn’t appreciate the flat, always-bored sounding vocals of Ian Curtis until I was an adult. The movie about Factory Records, “24 Hour Party People” proved to be life changing for me in the early 2000s, and later I watched “Control” at the Dobie Theater in 2007 with a whopping 2 other people in the entire theater. I cried in silence through the entire movie. Both movies gave me an understanding of why Ian Curtis and the music of Joy Division mattered.
New Order made me dance and was fun, Joy Division didn’t make me dance until I heard “Transmission”. I believe it to be one of the best songs ever written nowadays, but it took me a long time to get there.
I was lucky to see New Order before Bernard Sumner and Peter Hook stopped playing nice, at the Dallas stop for the “Republic” tour at Starplex, summer of 1993. I’d just graduated high school and had my whole life ahead of me, which I assumed would include seeing bands like New Order again, which has happened since, but it’s not the same seeing New Order without Peter Hook, or seeing Peter Hook without the rest of New Order. In fact, this is why I’ve missed the last couple of Peter Hook & the Light shows.
I feel sort of shafted, which I felt again on Saturday when I recorded video during “Disorder” to send to a friend and realized Peter wasn’t even playing the bass! Ok, ok, I can let it go because the other bass player looked and moved so much like Peter, that it had to be a family affair. Jack Bates is Peter Hook’s son, who also tours with The Smashing Pumpkins, where he can really show that there’s more to him than just being Hooky’s son.
I needed this extra perspective as I was feeling like I was watching a tribute band within a tribute band which made me feel some kind of negative way, instead of the utmost appreciation and gratitude for the fact that I’m alive at the same time as Peter Hook and still get to hear his voice and those bass riffs.
He dedicated the set to Ian Curtis who died by suicide on May 18, 1980 at just 23 years old. He’d have been 70 this year. Forget blaming his epilepsy, the medication, and his marriage, what about the fact that his frontal lobe wasn’t fully developed at that age, yet the lyrics he wrote can still stop you dead in your tracks when you listen to them today, 46 years later?
Overall it was a great show! There was a rain delay as Texas weather is always unpredictable, so the old goths stood in the oddly humorous bright and sunny, yet rainy line under a giant rainbow, waiting to get into The Far Out Lounge. As Levitation gave the all clear, the bad-asses at The Far Out Lounge started scanning tickets and getting wristbands on wrists, so the crowd could get inside as soon as they were allowed to and stake out a shady spot to watch Peter Hook & the Light remind them why it’s important to rally on occasion.
Later that night I waited to see a band I didn’t think I knew, but knew I needed to see while I had the opportunity, Cabaret Voltaire.
Whoa! This band absolutely blew my mind. I know I’m late to the game, and midway through the set, I realized I was getting another musical history lesson, that bridged many connections in my brain through beats, sounds, and songs I’ve heard at clubs, in movie soundtracks, and playing low in the background at hip joints throughout my entire life. These guys were making what would become the electronic dance music genre, “House music” way before anyone else was doing it. Or maybe alongside Can, Kraftwerk, The Residents, and others I’ve missed along the way and am still discovering. For the people who missed this show and are big fans, I’m so sorry! I promise the experience wasn’t wasted on the uninitiated, as I’ve been waiting for this show my whole life and just didn’t know it.
Out of nowhere some multicolored disco lights came on where I was dancing and I was thrust back into the late 80s or early 90s when I wasn’t old enough to go anywhere cool, but I grew up near Dallas, where Level V, a teen club on the fifth floor of the West End building used to exist. To this day, it was one of the coolest dance clubs I’ve ever been to and it was for 13-17 year olds. Our parents drove us to downtown Dallas, dropped us off and we danced late into Friday and Saturday nights, listening to the likes of Cabaret Voltaire, Rob Base, Front 242, and all kinds of other dance music that was way ahead of its time and helped shape my musical taste.
The set was so good, I continued to listen to them through the weekend and slid down rabbit holes to get better acquainted with their catalog. From industrial noise, to deep house these guys were doing it. Way more melodic than Negativland or Tangerine Dream and way more danceable. There are only a few shows left this month in North America, so if they’ve been on your bucket list, make haste! (Or catch them in the UK.)
The more Austin changes, the more we need Levitation/Austin Psych Fest to keep bringing the fresh new stuff we haven’t heard before, and the old stuff that helped shape multiple generations of music lovers. Most large festivals pump out music for the masses, which feeds the machine to keep the music industry rolling forward, but it’s the funky, weird, niche music festivals that exist for the rest of us.
Featured photo of Cabaret Voltaire by Pooneh Ghana courtesy of Levitation
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