Sheffield University

Being in the delectable main hall of Sheffield University is likestepping into the interior of some vast gas works. The place is all jutting pipes and strange angles of symmetry, the whole room being constructed in the shape of a something-agram (I lost count of the corners) with a kind of inverted trampoline thing pinned onto the roof.

It's a design to match the nature of the city, of course, yet this overtly industrial piece of architecture oddly glows with a warmth and cosiness. A setting, on the face of it, a trifle too smug for the expected impact of tonight's entertainment. There are a selection of film shorts and videos (even Cabs-own clips) running for 90 minutes or so before the arrival of the group.

A curious blurring action. It felt as if they'd already arrived before they actually had. Furthermore, there's an eerie switch from screen watching to people watching. Particularly as, in the case of the Cabs, you can only 'watch' fleeting details in a wider field of scattered vision.

It's a night for frenzied, darting eyes. A Fixed Gaze is a virtual impossibility. Pan pupils from dark figures to TV screen to video screen. Absolute avoidance of a single focal point (more a focal-area).

Cabaret Voltaire now, in relation to their past, are a distillation. The songs, like the individual personalities, fired down into the one great thunder throb of Rhythm. The Cabs have only one Rhythm and they exploit it (or it exploits them) relentlessly.

Take 'The Crackdown' LP. Therein that Rhythm is a deep, sneaky pivot which installs itself like living background music. After a spin, you remember a few repeated vocal phrases, a few synth squeals, but bigger by far and running continually through your bones is that skull-crushing crack as bass locks chops with percussion and things inside begin to shudder.

The experience of Cabaret Voltaire is absurdly close to simply listening to that record. That Rhythm is a nerve-jangling anchor while all around there's a splattering of images, none allowed to stay long enough for your concentration to dwell upon and rationalise.

The Cabs are a soundtrack to a movie they project into your own head: much of it is an internal celluloid cut-up, bits and pieces of thought and memory dislodged and reassembled.They can leave you cold or leave you dizzy. You needn't enjoy, you needn't go again, but they can have An Effect.

Ultimately, there is no way to wrap your fingers around a definition of their excitement. In plain terms, there isn't any. It's like an attack from within. Insidious, dark, creepy. At the time, you might feel nothing.

But the next day...