The pioneering UK industrial music act Test Dept have issued a 1983 John Peel Session version of one of their earliest tracks, ‘State Of Affairs’, as a digital single. It is taken from Industrial Overture. Studio & Live Recordings 1982-1985, the first in a series of planned box sets that will chronicle the group’s career.
“We went into the BBC studios in Maida Vale [West London] to record our first John Peel session in 1983 and devised much of the material right there as we liked to explore spontaneity and experimentation in the studio environment,” the band explain. “’State Of Affairs’ started from a collection of sound source material we had gathered and brought in to work with and we then developed that into a live piece and recorded it. Its theme of burning books seems once again relevant to the times we are living through.”
Out on 5th December via the Artoffact label, Industrial Overture. Studio & Live Recordings 1982-1985 consists of 42 tracks across 4 CDs and will also be available digitally. 26 tracks are new to CD and digital formats, of which 12 have never been previously available at all. All contents have been compiled by Test Dept and are newly remastered by Paul Lavigne (Kontrast Mastering).
The box set includes a first ever reissue of the group’s 1983 cassette-only debut album Strength Of Metal In Motion, the classic Ecstasy Under Duress and Atonal & Hamburg albums (both of which have been unavailable for over three decades), plus a disc of hitherto unreleased studio recordings that incorporate two full sessions recorded for the John Peel show on BBC Radio 1.
Aural Aggravation 