Emanation Machine R. Gie 1916 / Suture Obsession / Macht Schrecken / Berufsverbot
Just in case you thought Throbbing Gristle were not hardcore enough, here is the debut LP by S.P.K to jolly up your weekend, recorded in some squalid South London squat in 1980, this release is not pretty listening.
Originating from Australia in 1978 SPK had their third 7″ record released on Industrial Records in 1979. A little later on in the 1980’s they got a exotic looking vocalist who I believe was Graeme Revell’s wife, and got slightly more poppy with a small chart hit to boot, called ‘Metal Dance’. Did they appear on The Tube or was that a dream I had?
Pete
February 2, 2008 at 1:20 amMy first proper ‘industrial’ / ‘avant garde’ whutevah purchase. I’d bought Neubauten’s Kollaps, but just associated that with being odd kind of punk music (!!!).
From here, my finances succumbed a heavy burden.
Hg
February 3, 2008 at 10:26 amI got into them a year later, with their Leichenschrei album. That was still pretty hardcore by comparison to most other stuff I was listening to. But yeah, within a further year or so they were indeed on The Tube.
Graeme Revell’s wife was Sinan Leong. To the best of my limited knowledge, the Wikipedia page is fairly accurate. Also looks like their Despair video was re-released on DVD last year.
Chris
February 4, 2008 at 3:18 amSplendid stuff! haven’t listened to this for years. I used to carry a ghetto blaster about with ‘auto-da-fe’ and the first DAF lp on either side of a tape. Not exactly very popular on the bus to school.
Micky, Annie of Devotion who you’ve met at parties and BBQs at mine sung for SPK (and Lustmord) in their early days.
Always kick myself for not going through to see them when they played in Glasgow shortly after they were on the Tube, but the venue they played at was well tight if you were under age and I didn’t want to run the risk of being knocked back at the door and left out in the cold (again!). Don’t care what anyone says – I loved ‘Metal Dance’.
BTW, if anyone has a copy of this ‘despair’ dvd re-release please give me a shout.
simon
February 4, 2008 at 9:33 am‘Metal Dance’ was a great track! Guys check out this link for more, much more SPK:
http://dualtrack.blogspot.com/search?q=SPK
🙂
Nic
February 4, 2008 at 1:47 pmI went to see them play live in Birmingham around the time of ‘Metal Dance’ (at a great club that was also a strip club – upstairs for strippers, downstairs for concerts – and full of Trannies in full wedding dress regalia): I personally thought that they had lost their intial edge then and become something of a dull electronic pop act, but the concert was pretty good…
I can remember lounging around in the afternoon on strong lysergics and laying the Bucket Bongs on thick while watching the SPK ‘Autopsy’ video…ah, the mid-80’s: happy days…
The ‘Therapy Through Violence’ of the SPK provides a link to the first demo by The Sinyx (“Whicker baskets – not for you: Bombmaking is what you’ll do!”)…
captain_fly
February 16, 2008 at 12:05 amYou weren’t dreaming, they were on The Tube;
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=MPBpYIZC9PM
Nick Hydra
February 25, 2010 at 6:35 pmMy first proper “Horrible Noise” industrial record, which to my surprise I really enjoyed. I got into the first Cabs LP in about 1984, and worked backwards (if you see what I mean).
I used to have the insert that came with the LP (can’t believe I lost it), which had quotes from “War on the mind”, a book I was reading at the time I bought the LP – which was a weird coincidence.
It later turned out that a BBC play (‘Psy Warriors) which Raye taped onto cassette using the earphone plug on the TV and we used extensively as samples on lots of songs was based on the book as well.
I always thought they were better than TG (never liked that band, never will. United is good but everything else is just… awful), and liked the fact they had an idea why the made such a racket – essentially trying to recreate the feelings of mental illness via sound.
They all described themselves as ‘survivors’of the mental health system either as patients or workers, hence SPK (Socialist Patients Kollective).
from wikipedia: “The group was officially founded in February 1970 by Doctor Wolfgang Huber of Heidelberg University. It began when Huber was sacked from his position in the University clinic because he refused to co-operate with the rest of the psychiatric department. This led to his group therapy patients staging protests and eventually occupying the administration offices of the University. Huber warned the director of the University that some of his group therapy patients may commit suicide if he wasn’t allowed to work with them again, so Huber was reinstated with full pay and given the use of 4 rooms from the university.
As part of a disinformation campaign aimed at reducing West German support for the Red Army Faction, the SPK was alleged to have conducted working circles based on explosives, radio transmission, photography, judo and karate, using group therapy sessions on dialectics, Marxism, religion, education and sexuality as a cover. The rhetoric denouncing the SPK as engaged in terrorist activity and a precursor to the RAF emerged after the arrest of Kristina Berster, who crossed the US border illegally seeking asylum from West German counterterrorism operations. Berster was acquitted of all conspiracy charges, and the disinformation campaign was exposed by Greg Guma.
“By all accounts,” including the admission of a West German embassy spokesman, the “SPC was fairly harmless.” Kristina Berster explained that “the purpose of the Socialist Patients Collective was to ‘find out the reasons why people feel lonely, isolated and depressed and the circumstances which caused these problems.'”
AL Puppy
February 25, 2010 at 9:45 pmNick – I have to disgree with you on Throbbing Gristle. I saw them play three times and they were awesome. The best live performances of any group I have ever seen. There was a power and intensity to their music, to their performances which was unique. The structure of the sounds (the music) created a disorientating aural architecture of otherness, fracturing the fabric of familiar space/time geometries, allowing the impossible and the incomprehensible to become briefly but sensually manifest within (and beyond /outside) the performance.
Nick Hydra
February 26, 2010 at 10:54 amWell, I never really wanted to start in on TG, and bear in mind I never saw them live, and never even heard anything by them until well after they’d split up, so I totally respect your opinion (it’s all a matter of taste after all), and this is not me having a go at you for liking them, this is me having a go at them for being rubbish.
I have to admit I came to them with a very strong idea of what they were like (again without ever having heard them) which I can summarise as ‘poncy artwank nazi shit’.
And I recognise that this was not entirely accurate, and only based on what I had read in the music press, and this attitude covered all the related ‘Industrial’ bands most of whom actually had almost nothing in common except they didn’t sound like rock n roll.
So I dismissed a whole load of bands without ever hearing them – Cabs, Neubaten, SPK, Monte Cazzaza, Test Dept, Non – all of those bands were beyond the pale, and I assumed that anyone who liked them was 1 – a tosser and 2 – a crypto-fascist.
And having been introduced the The Cabs early stuff which I absolutely loved, I recognised that I might be wrong about the rest of them, and started listening properly to what I could get hold of (which was a lot, as Raye who I was living with at the time is seriously into that suff).
And I changed my mind about a lot of it – I really like Test Dept (especially live), Nuebaten (when they’re not completely up their own arses), love the 1st SPK LP, but TG I just can’t get into.
Which is strange, ’cause it’s not that I’m put off by the noise element – SPK were just as abrasive, and Discharge weren’t exactly a string quartet, it’s not the ‘Art’ element – like the Cabs weren’t ‘Arty’? Like Crass weren’t ‘Arty’?.
I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think it’s the complete lack of coherant thought – not ideology exactly – I’m not sure of the term I want here, but the Cabs didn’t have an ideology as such, but were interested in systems of control and power structures, and were therefore dealing with totalitarian ideas, but from a critical persective. You never got the idea that were in favour of state control, or were even disinterested observers.
All the ‘Industrial’ bands I like seem to have a critical understanding of what was wrong with the world even if they hadn’t worked out quite what to do about it (not disimilar to the anarcho scene), where TG always just seemed to want to shock people, which on it’s own is not a bad thing, but I feel the problem is that they were an art group who decided to carry out ‘interventions’ into the less rarified air of the music world.
Unfortunately, coming from the very small and insular art scene where ‘shocking’ people is almost expected and everyone gets the reference you are quoting, they didn’t seem to consider (or care) what happens when you start trangressing taboos outside of that very specific scene.
To compare them to Crass – who certainly came partly from the same art background, Crass were very aware of the potential for misunderstanding, and while they deliberately set out to shock, always had an end goal in sight, and would explain themselves endlessly to anyone who would listen, and people still didn’t get a lot of what they were trying to say.
Now I don’t think anyone in TG was/ is a fascist, but they played with that imagery a lot, and I understand they were trying to push boundaries and make people re-evaluate what is and isn’t acceptable (and that they had what Jon Savage describes as “A ghoulish sense of humour”), and that part of the point was to disturb and confuse people so they considered ideas outside their normal hidebound thought processess (again not dissimilar to Crass), but the danger with that is not that you will disgust and repel people (which happened), but that you will attract really fucking horrible people who you then can’t get rid of.
And I know that the early punk scene was awash with swastikas, and I know that most of the people involved with the scene had really flimsy reasons for wearing them, but to a great extent as soon as the NF started to try to co-opt the punk scene everyone realised what a bad idea it was and that stuff for the most part dissapeared very quicky.
I know it’s not TGs fault that people are stupid, but it their fault for not realising (or maybe not caring), that their dabbling with nazi/ fascist images would have an actual real effect on peoples lives in the real world.
Quite apart from the fact that I hate Gen’s squeaky little voice, I can never forgive them for being almost entirely responsible for the undercurrent of right wing politics that infects the industrial scene like a cancer to this day.
Ok not ‘almost entirely responsible’, Boyd Rice(Non) is just an out and out fascist, and Death in June make no bones about their National Socialist politics, and they have to bear part of the burden, but they’re doing it on purpose, TG just never bothered to say “Look can all you Nazis just fuck off? You’ve got it completely wrong, that’s not what we meant at all.”
So after about 20 years of thinking about it, I have changed my opinion from ‘poncy artwank nazi shit’ to just ‘poncy artwank shit’. Which is progress of a sort I suppose.
Just don’t get me started on PTV.
Oh and ‘the’ has ONE ‘e’ in it, and ‘of’ is spealt with an ‘F’, not a ‘v’.
Chris L
February 28, 2010 at 11:55 pmDon’t really want to get into this now but a good opportunity to post up a link to this hysterical GPO “interview” I came across:
http://newhumanist.org.uk/2095/shock-and-bore
re the above post, while your concerns are valid, I’d honestly think the whole TG proto-industrial scene was simply so small and insular that i’d be surprised if their ‘fascistic flirtings’ ever attained any pollenisation outwith a few musty gigs, clubs and sunlight-bereft bedsits.
Tho agreed that whole Death In June/Der Blutharsch neo-folk scene is a bit different and potentially more insidious. Basically those dorks just need a good kicking.
Penguin • Post Author •
March 1, 2010 at 12:46 amAnd here is Fiona’s original interview with G.P.O. and others recorded in 1983
https://www.killyourpetpuppy.co.uk/news/?p=2773
TonyEhrfucht
March 1, 2010 at 10:56 amNick,
PLEASE get started on PTV. I for one would love to hear your thoughts. I am a big fan of PTVs stuff but always get the impression that the principles and the practice of that organisation may not have been the same (as the New Humanist interview suggests). Has Gen ever talked about the seized video material which resulted in their exile? I have heard him comment on the fact that it contained footage of err body modification for want of a better term, but from what info I can find of the tape in question the material was a lot further out than piercing or scarification, and something it seemed particularly unwise to have floating around with a PTV logo on it, even if it’s creation had nothing to do with the organisation. Not wanting to stir up trouble here, it’s just something that has irked me for a long while.
Nick Hydra
March 1, 2010 at 1:34 pmOK,
This is really about “Thee temple ov” rather than PTV per se, as I’ve only listened to very short bits of their recorded work, and mainly only the 1st LP and the “Godstar” era. Hippy bollocks essentially, but each to their own…
Having read the non-interview on the link above, it pretty much confirms my misgivings about the whole thing.
Again, the problem is not that I thought that Gen etc were taking the temple seriously. I always thought that it was a joke on organised religions, and an exercise in “How far can we take this before we get sussed out?”
In the same way I always thought Scientology was – I mean Hubbard wrote a book about what a con organised religion is and explored the possibilities of founding a completely fake religion, in order to exploit the tax exemption awarded to religious bodies.
The fact that Scientology is SUCH a load of bollocks doesn’t stop people believing in it. But the people who believe in it are obviously deeply troubled, and the “personality test” they get people to fill out is obviously designed to pick up on these problems.
As a joke I did one once, and it identified some pretty accurate “issues” for want of a better word, but nothing I hadn’t worked out by myself, and nothing I couldn’t trace back to particular events or psychological states brought on by the dichotomy between what I wanted my life to be, and what it actually was.
But y’know, life’s like that, and whatever problems I was having certainly weren’t as a result of pre-historic extra-terrestrial beings exerting a malign influence on my psyche (or whatever it is they try to sell you).
And this is my problem, yes it (thee temple) is quite funny for people like me, and undoubtedly hlarious for Gen and his acolytes to wank over the pathetic sexual fantasies of others.
But it is not funny when other people (naive, misguided people admittedly, but there’s never been a short supply of those) take it seriously.
As a human being you have a responsibility not to exploit and manipulate people even (especially) if they want you to.
If you reference Charles Manson and Jim Jones, what are you implying?
Because it’s always implyed isn’t it? God forbid you should ever actually nail your colours to the mast, that makes it far too difficult to deflect criticism with the old stand by “Oh, you didn’t think we meant it did you? We were being ironic”.
What exactly is ironic of funny about Charles Manson? Nazi, head fucker, murderer (Whether he actually killed anyone is neither here nor there, Hitler never actually killed anyone personally).
What exactly is funny or ironic about Jonestown? Insane religious dictator orders the murder of twenty odd people who want to leave his abusive sex cult, and then either deludes hundreds of people into committing suicide, or forces them to kill themselves (Including children. Children for fuck’s sake.).
Fucking hysterical. I’ll just ironically kick you teeth down your fucking throat shall I? And then we can have a laugh about how transgressive it all is.
What’s so great about a film of an electrocution by electric chair? What’s so great about a fake snuff film? Or a real one for that matter? Why are we watching it? Is it funny? Do you get your kicks from sexual torture and murder? Do want people to think you do, just to shock them? I don’t know, and I don’t care very much.
And what if you show someone a snuff film and they do get their sexual gratification from sexual torture? What if it turns them on? What if they think they’ve found a kindred spirit? What if they imply your approval of this kind of activity? What if they delude themselves that as head of thee temple your implied approval is your sanction to go and do it for real? What then?
We’re back to my points about TG and their lack of “ideology”, if someone was showing a film of an execution to show how horrible it is, in an attempt to convince people that state executions are barbaric and counter-productive, I’d probably watch it.
I’d know it was going to be unpleasant, and I don’t need convincing of the stupidity of legalised state murder, but I’d put myself through it, because sometimes you need reminding exactly how foul these things are.
But to just show it for no reason, just to get a reaction – any reaction – isn’t shocking, it’s pathetic, and disgusting, and vile.
Tony Puppy
March 2, 2010 at 10:10 pmAs I remember, one of the things TOPY acolytes were supposed to do was at 11pm on the 23rd of each month masturbate into an envelope and send the results to the Temple.
My question to the panel is, does today count as it is the 2nd of the 3rd?
And I wonder what the people who live in Gen’s old house on Beck Road think of their late month post?
I’ve never stopped giving.
John Eden
March 17, 2010 at 12:52 pmWhilst all that was a long time ago for me and I don’t feel the need to defend it or promote it today, there are some mad things being said here.
1) The piece in New Humanist was a complete hatchet job which included a number of inaccuracies. As my letter printed in the subsequent issue pointed out.
2) The “exile” occured after a Dispatches TV programme put together by evangelical christians tried to fit up TOPY and the P_Orridges for satanic ritual abuse. The starring “victim” had no connection with the P-Orridges or TOPY and only “remembered” it all after some very creative “therapy” at the hands of… evangelical christians.
3) The video in question was “First Transmission” from circa 1981. It features consenting adults and a bunch of supposedly “found footage”. Whilst not exactly to my taste there is nothing in it for the police to trouble themselves with. Which is presumably why no warrant for arrest was issued.
4) The best account of all this is in the late Simon Dwyer’s “Rapid Eye” magazine or David Keenan’s “England’s Hidden Reverse”.
5) Everyone I ever met in TOPY (and that is a lot of people) was very clear that the use of Manson/Jones imagery was to highlight the oppressive nature of ultra-conformist cults, organisations and belief systems. I don’t recall anyone sitting around having a laugh about it, everyone was a Very Serious Young Man.
6) As has been pointed out, it isn’t TG’s fault that some people are stupid. If some people are looking for “shocking” stuff to get their kicks then there is always plenty of it out there. It is however worth looking at the later evolution of both PTV and TOPY from the late 80s onwards – all of the Manson/Jones/etc stuff had been abandoned and there were a few texts floating about actively criticising all the nazi/satanist stuff. Try this one, for example: http://www.uncarved.org/othertexts/satan.html
On the other hand I can see it is a lot more comforting to be outraged by a miniscule subculture which had its heyday in the 1970s and 80s than trying to get to grips with the here and now. 😉
TonyEhrfucht
March 17, 2010 at 6:50 pm‘On the other hand I can see it is a lot more comforting to be outraged by a miniscule subculture which had its heyday in the 1970s and 80s than trying to get to grips with the here and now. ‘
Hmm…
This is taken from the intro to the new edition of the Psychick Bible:
Fifteen years on, we are left with an occult landscape that has been given its
shape and direction by the Temple, whether it is publicly acknowledged or
not. The vital current, of course, has mutated and evolved once again—not
into a physical order this time, but into dispersal across the World Wide
Web and mass publishing. While this provides for an incredibly unique
period of open access to occult information, one can hardly help but long
for the immediacy and community of a physical network in contrast to
the endless flamewars, constant degradation of information quality, and
terminal loss of context that are the Internet’s stock in trade.
The TOPY years represented a period in which magick was resituated
in its natural context—as a survival mechanism, in the urban blight of
modern civilization just as it was in the dark forests of precivilization.
Though there may be nothing here now but the recordings, the recordings
are there for all to see, to learn from, to improve upon.’
Genesis and his camp obviously don’t see TOPY as having been a miniscule subculture, they see it as having been an if not signifcant then at least a tangible influence on today..
And I am probably living in the past ha ha … but I always go back to PTV. There’s something re-energising and eek dare I even say it ‘magickal’ about it. Am I allowed to use that word or am I supposed to have grown up? Even I immediately associate it with the sight of a load of Twilight-obsessed goth-metallers dressing up as druids and stomping around a henge all Odin-like while the missus knocks up a medieval barbie for Beltane.
Yeah, that’s it probably. PTV still really mean something to me. It’s a big part of who I am today and that part of me is still idealistic and still tries to live that ‘hippy bollocks’, not get dragged down into the grey days and would love to see the ideas improved upon. But part of me still feels like an idiot who got taken in by a snake-oil salesman too. Not just by Gen and PTV but by Crass and everyone ha ha.
I suppose that’s why I am interested in Gen and his motivations…. for the same reasons I rush to hear a Crass demo, I can’t resist a peek behind the curtain, I want to know how the trick works. It’s hard to seperate the song from the singer.
John Eden
March 19, 2010 at 9:19 pmLooking back at the first time I ever met anyone from TOPY: http://www.uncarved.org/blog/2010/03/the-twentieth-gig-i-can-remember-going-to/
TonyEhrfucht
March 22, 2010 at 10:55 amGreat article John, thanks for that.
Is this from the Astoria gig?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BHe-N88pXc
Penguin • Post Author •
March 22, 2010 at 11:11 amJohn, were you describing the Drayton Park gig in the squatted synagogue in the article above?
Penguin • Post Author •
March 22, 2010 at 11:37 amActually after re-reading it would not have been Drayton Park as that gig was way before American Scott was in PTV.
Was it the gig at the Mankind Club, a squat above Hackney Central station where PTV performed at four in the morning? Supporting that night was My Bloody Valentine and Silver Star Ameoba. I went to that gig with Curtis of The Mob / Blyth Power who lived nearby behind Hackney Townhall and who knew Debbie (MBV) from All The Madmen Yeovil days when she was in Bikini Mutants.
Curtis used to drive PTV around a fair bit in the converted truck he had in the mid 80’s. One night being picked up from Heathrow by Curtis, the van was stopped and impounded for a while whilst the plod searched it for gold, as the biggest gold theft in UK history had just taken place a little while before at the airport! Nothing to do with PTV or TOPY I hasten to add. they were free to go after a while!
John Eden
March 23, 2010 at 9:35 amHi Pengy! No it was later than them, I think – this was a squat in Old Street (with no PTV) and then the Astoria gig in 1988… the others you mention were a bit early for me…. 🙁
John Eden
March 23, 2010 at 9:39 amTony – that video looks like a little later still, possibly taken off the commercially available one called “Black Joy” which I think was shot in Manchester and also a Subterrania gig in west London.
How come I can remember all this but not the dates of birthdays for people I really care about? 🙂
TonyEhrfucht
March 23, 2010 at 10:55 amCheers John.
I’ll have to pick up a copy of Black Joy. For some reason I always avoided it – possibly cos it was a Jettisoundz production and some of their early tapes were a bit err.. shoddy production-wise.
I wish someone would reissue Maple Syrup on DVD, there are bits and pieces on Youtube but not all of it. The Spanish TV footage is the best, awesome versions of Southern Coumfort and I Like You.
I know what you mean memory-wise. I can remember where and when I bought every album, CD etc I have which means I get a rush of vivid memories of holidays, friends, homes, workplaces etc whenever I’m rifling through the collection, but couldn’t tell you whate date it is today.
Dev
March 24, 2010 at 1:00 amYawwwwwwwn…. Nick, maybe you were born with higher knowledge or something – but I, for one, at 15 years old found the TOPY thing a worthwhile class aligned against R.E. at school for example.
Do you have children?
Think about their choices. It’s there in what Gen was demonstrating at the time… of course it was a laugh!! Mirrors!
I wanked through my induction – about 6 months – and then moved on.
I don’t know about you… all settled down and grown up…. but I still think with an open mind every day.