We've always been observant of things, and I think Crackdown was very much like that and the film interpretation was that journalistic view of that situation.

I think we saw our reaction coming from Dada, but at the same time, it formed into punk, which was very much a reaction to the social conditions. That was part of it for us as well, and that's why we were kind of swept along with punk.

We were iconoclastic. We weren't there to sort of follow the trends really. So it was important that we were making a statement against that.

In the 80s, we were still living in a kind of Cold War environment.

Even if that statement was ambiguous, we kind of wanted to cause a stir. We thought that by having the name "Cabaret Voltaire", that with it came a certain responsibility. It wasn't meant to be purely entertainment; it was meant to be something a little bit more serious - and to provoke people - wrapped within an outer wrapping of entertainment.

Music doesn't have to be so rule-based - and so strict in its structures, construction and perception.

We were responding to a period in the 70s when we started that it was very much you cannot be involved in music unless you studied to do music.