I was digging through some old VHS tapes the other day and found a copy of Stakker’s Eurotechno (1989) and a couple of early TV recordings of clips including probably the first techno ‘video clip’ that caught my eye when I was at high school – Westbam’s Hold Me Back – which was all computer generated patterns circa 1988/9. Certainly it was one of the only totally computer generated ones they used to play on TV in Australia.
Then the Music Thing blog linked to TV rips of video clips for 808 State’s Cubik on YouTube, which is tagged in the same manner as Psychic TV’s Joy.
Looking back and seeing 808 State pretending to be making the computer generated sounds – the opening guitarist shots are ridiculous, the poxy drummer likewise – but what a killer track! Then Psychic TV’s neo-pagan acid house ritual complete with Genesis P-Orrdige before he began his big sex change experiment/art project – and the great PTV skull test pattern brings back way too many memories. One of my school friends at the time, John Lehmann, was a huge Psychic TV and Virgin Prunes fan and tried to get me into them. PTV never really made much sense to me back then. (I’m not sure they do now either!) Joy is a killer track though. Idiots Guide To Dreaming and Uncarved posted some great stuff on that period of PTV (and Richard Norris) recently which will give some good context.
