From: thomas@McRCIM.McGill.EDU (Thomas Jelonek)
Subject: Re: SPK: eggs on a plate
Originator: thomas@Davinci.McRCIM.McGill.EDU
Organization: McGill Research Center for Intelligent Machines, Montreal, Canada
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 92 16:17:58 GMT


In article <1992Apr15.230255.2486@mac.cc.macalstr.edu>, ebestrom@mac.cc.macalstr.edu writes:
|> Dear Don and other folks- I'm new to the usenet scene and I can't get the damn thing to work RE
|>  your message, so I'll just post this new one.  Yeah SPK is great! There is a
|> good book that has much to do with them: RE/Search published the INDUSTRIAL
|> CULTURE HANDBOOK sometime in the mid 8O's and its alot of fun.  It traces the
|>  Industrial folks from their  beginnings in the mid 7O's : Throbbing Gristle,
|> SPK, Cabaret Voltaire (if I remember right), and others.  Detailed interviews,
|> discographies, and pictures.  It costs about $1O but my school library was
|> goodthinkful enough to have it, so I read it for free. The collegiate radio
|> station here, WMCN 91.7 FM (St.Paul, MN) used to have some records but scummy
|> people stole them. "Information Overload Unit" was an early album of shitty
|> unmoving lo-fi noise I could have made myself over a weekend (not empowering
|> but boring.) "Leichenschrei" -("corpsescream" in english) is I think next in

I would translate it as shrieking corpses, but whatever.

|> the sequence and came out 1981.  It is a joy to own, with its cover artwork (a
|> painting of a mind-control machine "with metric tableaux" made by a patient in
|> a Swiss sanatorium circa 1918) and back cover photo of a scary performance in

The artist is Adolf Wolffi.  Graeme Revell along with collaborators 
(Nurse with Wound among others) released an album of interpretations 
of Wolffi's compositions entitled `Necropolis, Amphibians and Reptiles'
it is released by Nettwerk in 1990 and is excellent.

|> masks in "an abandoned brick factory".  All the songs are great, ranging from
|> mellow and scary, to tribal and scary, to ultimate scary extruded noise. 
|> "Seite Lysso" or side one, ends with a crazy head-crushing rhythmic lock
|> groove.  This is a classic. 

I couldn't agree more

|> Later records include the "Machine Age Voodoo" and
|> "Fetish" singles of about 1983 which take the dance-poppy approach long before
|> any of these modern whippersnappers, but SPK wasn't doing what they did  best.
|> On "Zamia Laman: Dreams of Byzantine Flowers", they do all of these soft, dark,
|> vaguely classical songs.  Good stuff.  Then 1987's "Gold and Poison" was back
|> to the poppy thing but trying to be noisy at the same time.  It wasn't that
|> bad, but I would'nt buy it as a new album. After that, I dunnnnnno...
|> 	By the way, I've heard of SPK as standing for "Systems Planning
|> Korporation", "Socialistisches Patienten Klinik" and "Surgical Penis Klinik."
|> Any other acronymic ideas out there?

Actually around the time of Leichenschrei a number of the original members
of SPK committed suicide, remember that they were mental patients so SPK 
went under the name SePpuKu, which is Japanese ritual suicide. 

|> 	Well, I hope I've put some food on your plate, Don. I'm sure you'll get
|> a hefty response to fill in other holes in your SPK knowledge. Take care,
|> 				Eric
|> 
|>  	   
Newsgroups: rec.music.industrial