Alexander Oye — The Sound of Progress DVD

In the mid 1980s a young Dutch director Alexander Oey set about capturing something of the strange sub-cultural music scene centred around London which had grown out of the breech created by Throbbing Gristle and the first wave of Industrial music in the 1970s. The groups he chose to work with were Coil, Foetus, Current 93 and Test Dept. The result was a collection of interviews and live footage released on VHS in 1988 called The Sound of Progress which Cold Spring have now seen fit to give a remastered DVD release.

After years of grainy VSH dubs and badly transferred digital copies it's undoubtedly gratifying to see and hear Oey's study with the clarity originally intended. What he documents is a rare snapshot of a scene struggling to transcend the gloom and stifling conservatism of Thatcher's Britain; turning Industrial music's sonic and ideological weapons of détournement against themselves and everything around them.

Oey's subtitle 'popmusic according to...' is the leading question which the groups start out by addressing. Angus Farquhar of Test Dept interviewed along with his band mates in a manner analogous to a press conference with a guerrilla cell sets the tone with a denunciation of pop's pseudo-spiritual guff. The sentiment is echoed by Jim Thirlwell and most nihilistically by David Tibet who just wants to give the masses "a good kicking". The snippets of interviews are interspersed with live footage. Test Dept.'s parodic fascist rally in a dilapidated Dutch warehouse is set against the chaotic walls of monastic chant and guitar noise that was Current 93's early performances and Thirlwell's solo confessions. The latter's deconstructed rock star is seen sideling up to the mic out of the darkness as if drunk before crooning away. Unlike the others he admits to a love of Western trash culture. A high point is the regrettably brief footage of Coil at Sam Therapy studio's during the recording sessions for Horse Rotorvator. Peter Christopherson tinkers at what looks like the famous Fairlight sampling keyboard while Balance and Thrower tune up their guitars (which in itself is an odd sight).

The false unity which the documenting of a 'scene' might have led to is refuted by the marked difference between the protagonists on political and social issues. Test Dept. who explicitly identified with the community of laid off factory workers in their native Deptford make the most conventional political arguments albeit suffuse with Burroughs-like references to subverting control mechanisms and accessing suppressed parts of the psyche. Referring to the brutality of their performances Farquhar retorts "you must show the full weight of power of the opposition". Their jack hammer appropriation of traditional working class factory tools and settings aimed to "break the mould of the past ... confusion is part of the process". Current 93's David Tibet on the other hand offers a total condemnation of Western culture and music. At one point he summarises "it offers nothing but shallow pleasure and petty enjoyment" . His contempt for the blinkered masses - "drinking, fucking, picking people up" is stark compared to the more circumspect outlook of the other contributors. Tibet does not come across well. Unintentional or not his decision to move briefly to India followed up at the end of the documentary by his swift return is indicative of a degree of self-delusion which was common among the counter-cultural vanguard of the time. His fantasy of an Indian retreat free from Western corruption was dashed by swarms of hippies and fake Lamas playing Jimmy Henrix!

It is perhaps unsurprising that Coil's Jhon Balance provides the introspective antidote to all this posturing. The footage of him and Stephen Thrower in the courtyard of the studio reveals someone who took seriously the promise of industrial music as a way to access what Burroughs called the third mind; "it's only by ploughing into yourself I think you can get anything worthwhile" states Balance with a flash of the eyes. Somewhere in the clash between the mundane and the extreme which was a constant trope of industrial music culture might arise this harbinger of truth, a purveyor of new possibilities and personal spiritual revelation. What comes across amid all the adversarial rhetoric and refusal of identification is that each group took their work not only as an outward attack on the culture of their time but simultaneously as a personal journey of liberation. The two could never be separated; beating up the culture and beating up yourself were two sides of the same coin. Oey documents the high-watermark when the second wave of what Throbbing Gristle dubbed the 'information war' was in full swing. It wouldn't last and when the political project faded into memory what remained of the drive to self-liberation would often degenerate into the sort of pseudo-spiritual guff Farquhar dismissed.

Sadly there is nothing else included with the main feature besides a short introduction in the booklet by David Keenan the author of England's hidden reverse. This is for me something of a missed opportunity not least as without considerable knowledge of the artists involved and their significance to British music history the documentary might appear a little trite and adolescent. Why not contemporary interviews with the main actors? Why not a commentary or some extra material from Oey himself to provide context? All these groups had significant careers some continuing up to the present and yet this release stands in isolation as if this really was as good as it got and no more needs to be said. While the release of this sub-cultural oddity in updated form is undoubtedly welcome, without context or extra material it's unlikely to bring much renewed interest in the artists involved.