Test Dept Release the book ‘Total State Machine’

Great news for music lovers and fans of Test Dept. that releases a book that includes reflections and essays from founder members Paul Jamrozy, Graham Cunnington and Angus Farquhar, plus Stephen Mallinder (Cabaret Voltaire), Robin Rimbaud (Scanner), Marek Kohn, Malcolm Pointer, Ivan Novak (Laibach), Alan Sutcliffe (Kent Miners) and and a host of other contributors who were involved or affected in some way by the work of Test Dept, with an introduction by Alexei Monroe and Peter Webb.

The book also contains original artwork, photography and documentary images of the group from all periods of their work.







How did a group of disaffected young people come to pose a serious threat to the symbolic order of the Thatcherite state?

Test Dept were on the front line of struggles which are still playing out in the present day; raising questions, galvanising resistance and unnerving the titanic forces unleashed by the Thatcherite doctrine that still dominates the political mainstream. Their music was a full-frontal assault on the senses that also contained moments of reflection, beauty and echoes of post-industrial decay.

Until now the full history of British music, culture and politics in the 1980s and 1990s had not been told – a chapter has been missing. Total State Machine is this missing chapter. More than just a history of a group, it captures a wider history of those troubled times.

‘Total State Machine’ is published by PC-Press and is a unique historical document and visual representation of Test Dept, one of the UK’s truly investigative agitators, authentic industrialists, utilisers and recyclers of society’s debris.

Printed on 385 pages of high quality art paper.

‘Total State Machine’ is published by PC-Press and is a unique historical document and visual representation of Test Dept.

The Paperback version comes with an Archive Test Dept A2 Poster. For a limited period – until the 1st June – it will be £40 after that it will be £45.

Available here:

http://www.pc-press.co.uk/shop/



Test Dept. were an industrial music group from London, one of the most important and influential early industrial music acts. Their approach was marked by the use of “found” material, re-constructed to better serve their purpose, of making “more” with “less”.

The group formed in the London suburb of New Cross in 1981. The core members of the group were Graham Cunnington, Paul Jamrozy, Jonathan Toby Burdon, Paul Hines and Angus Farquhar. Other members who played with the group at various times included Alistair Adams, Neil Starr, John Eacott, Andy Cowton, Tony Cudlip, David Coulter, Gus Ferguson and Martin King. Band signs to Some Bizzare Label the label connected acts like Depeche Mode Soft Cell, PTV, Foetus, Swans. The slides and film for Test Dept multi-media events were made by visual director Brett Turnbull.

Their discography spans a wide variety of influences and styles, including a collaboration with the South Wales Striking Miners Choir in support of the miners’ strike of 1984. They were particularly notable for complex and powerful percussion, as well as high-energy live performances. Like the German band Einstürzende Neubauten,another Some Bizzare Label signing with whom they are often compared, Test Dept used unconventional instruments such as scrap metal and industrial machinery as sound sources; however, Test Dept’s use of these objects was far more rhythmic than was Neubauten’s, and was often accompanied by film and slide shows. The group were noted for large-scale events in unusual site-specific locations, such as Waterloo station, Cannon Street station, Stirling Castle and the disused St Rollox Railway Works in Glasgow.

The band’s album The Unacceptable Face of Freedom was praised by a music reviewer for The New York Times, claiming the album was notable for a “sophisticated use of sound-collage techniques and the helter-skelter momentum of its cyclical rhythms“.

In later years the band’s music became less industrial and took on many of the properties of techno. The band’s political stance was energised by the passing of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.

The band split up in 1997, but its former members have continued to work in the fields of art and culture. Angus Farquhar re-established the ancient Gaelic Beltane Fire Festival, held yearly on the night before/morning of the first of May on Edinburgh‘s Calton Hill. Farquhar also formed NVA, an innovative theatre company specialising in large-scale site-specific events. Cunnington, who suffers from chronic rheumatoid arthritis, produced a one-man show in 1996 called Pain, recounting his experiences as a sufferer from this condition. Jamrozy works as an artist under the name of Satellitic. Gus Ferguson teaches music to orphans in Kathmandu, and young buddhist monks in Northern India.