On the Shelf 197: Test Dept
Oct. 3rd, 2019 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedsitter23I saw Test Dept in the 90s and they are easily in the very short list of the best concerts that I have ever seen.
Test Dept had made their name in the 80s as one of the innovators of industrial music. Like a British Version of Einsturzende Neubaten, it was 'industrial' in the purest sense. The band I saw was very much that same 80s band. Ironically, although they were signed to Martin Atkins's Invisible Records- the music they produced in the 90s wasn't all that exciting. It was as if they were discovering electronica, but not sure how to incorporate their sound into it. As others were bridging the decades, they seemed to be just noodling around with loops. I was probably a bit too harsh on them, but in a golden age of electronic music, they sounded like the new generation had passed them up.
Disturbance picks up 21 years on now. It is still Cunnington and Jamrozyat the helm. What is encouraging is that it does sound like a modern update on the band. I have seen this release compared to Underworld, and there is something to that, but it is very much seeped in industrial brethren like Killing Joke, Laibach, and even Coil.
Opening track "Speak Truth to Power" feels a bit off to me, but past that song's ambition for sing-along, the record really pulls in what I want- the band from the 80s, brought to a modern audience.
Test Dept had made their name in the 80s as one of the innovators of industrial music. Like a British Version of Einsturzende Neubaten, it was 'industrial' in the purest sense. The band I saw was very much that same 80s band. Ironically, although they were signed to Martin Atkins's Invisible Records- the music they produced in the 90s wasn't all that exciting. It was as if they were discovering electronica, but not sure how to incorporate their sound into it. As others were bridging the decades, they seemed to be just noodling around with loops. I was probably a bit too harsh on them, but in a golden age of electronic music, they sounded like the new generation had passed them up.
Disturbance picks up 21 years on now. It is still Cunnington and Jamrozyat the helm. What is encouraging is that it does sound like a modern update on the band. I have seen this release compared to Underworld, and there is something to that, but it is very much seeped in industrial brethren like Killing Joke, Laibach, and even Coil.
Opening track "Speak Truth to Power" feels a bit off to me, but past that song's ambition for sing-along, the record really pulls in what I want- the band from the 80s, brought to a modern audience.
