Review Summary: Proto-Industrial I
Like most bands started by eager kids brimming with anger and a relentless artistic pursuit, Australian industrial pioneers SPK were less a music group in the orthodox sense, and more a multi-media collective. Every single idea that poured out them ended up being flung into the ether in one form or another, and so loving SPK in their early (and only) days meant not only listening to their abrasive sonic assaults, but reading pamphlets, zines and Marxist mini-manifestos, taking in crudely made geometric visual art and coarse-grained photographs, and above all else, trying to decipher what SPK stood for from one week to the next. In their nine-year span, the group has been known as SePpuKu, Surgikal Penis Klinik, Socialist Patients’ Kollectiv and dozens more, the title changing as fast as the members could direct their attention to their next song or collage or sketch or proclamation.
Factory/Retard/Slogun, one of three singles they released in ’79, their first months of existence, took what their proto-industrial peers Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire were formulating and plastered a toothy punk sneer onto its front. Forward momentum defines the proceedings. “Factory” starts off with a tribal push-pull rhythm for all of four seconds before the squeal and grind of metallic gears starts shuddering in at shattering frequencies, turning the pattern into an obelisk. “Retard” is a case study in static collage. And the closer “Slogun” moves in a brutalized cavalcade of primary fragments, amped up by the chant ‘Therapy Through Violence.’
SPK had a relatively short shelf-life, and by that measure, they matured their sound in dog years. By the mid-80’s, they were already sanding down the most abrasive edges of their sound, turning their brand of industrial squelch into an odd hybrid of dance-punk and textural electronics. Their first heaves remain their best - twitchy teenagers with no cogent purpose making music sound as harsh and caustic as it can become.
PS… of small, but never insignificant note is that the original pressing of this single did not have a locked groove, and once the last song petered out, it would send your stylus shrieking into the center of the record.
