SPK

SPK, formed in 1978 in Sydney, Australia, was a 1980s and early 1990s industrial music and noise music act featuring Graeme Revell, who would later g

SPK, formed in 1978 in Sydney, Australia, was a 1980s and early 1990s industrial music and noise music act featuring Graeme Revell, who would later go on to become a successful Hollywood movie composer. The group was formed when Revell (aka Operator) met up with Neil Hill (aka Ne/H/il). They were both working at a psychiatric hospital when they became inspired by the manifesto of the German radical Marxist group known as the Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv (SPK). The following words, taken from the SPK manifesto, are used on one of the band's first recordings, Slogun (1979): "Kill, Kill, Kill for inner peace/ Bomb, Bomb, Bomb for mental health/ Therapy through violence!". Dominik Guerin (aka Tone Generator) joined in 1980, and was later to concentrate on the band's notorious visual content. Guerin and Revell recorded the first album, Information Overload Unit (1981), in a Vauxhall squat (during the Brixton riots in London) with the help of Revell's brother Ash (aka Mr.Clean) and Wilkins (guitar/bass). After the recording of SPK's second album, Leichenschrei ("The Scream of the Corpse")(1982), they were joined by Sinan Leong, who had initially auditioned for a planned SPK side-project, Dance Macabre. She and Revell were later to marry. In 1983 Neil Hill committed suicide after the death of his girlfriend Margaret.

Other musicians working with SPK included James Pinker and Karel van Bergan, who toured the U.S. in 1982 with Guerin and Revell, Brian Williams of Lustmord, John Murphy of Forresta di Ferro (better known as Kraang) and Derek Thompson, who later had a brief stint in The Cure and went on to record as Hoodlum Priest. Thompson claims that he left SPK when founder member Revell wanted to take the band in what Thompson perceived as a more commercial direction .