SPK – Socialist Patients Kollective

In 1978-79 SPK were one of the bands working around the Darlinghurst squats scene, playing at Garibaldi's and other inner city venues. They were very much an experimental noise band using synthesisers (EMS Synthi AKS), guitars and drum machines and had a distinct philosophical position born of Deleuze and Guatarri and the tougher end of Continental Philosophy. I was living at Side Efx and had met and talked with Neil Hill (RIP) and had seen the band play several times.

In 1979 I had just built a prototype video synthesiser and wanted to try it out. I had some old B&W cameras that were really past their use by date and gave wonderful dirty pictures. With a similarly ancient synch generator and and the original Bush Video vision mixer I assembled a rack of gear around the prototype video synthesiser and we took it down to their rehearsal studio in Liverpool St. With a camera operator and myself we set the cameras up around them and set up to record the sound. The cameras were mixed with the video synthesiser through the video mixer with lots wipes and pulsing noisy effects. We recorded six songs.

Later Neil and I went up to Paddington Video Access where we cut the B&W tapes down and colourised them.

Contakt
Germanik
Slogun
unknown
unknown
Contakt (vs. 2)