The Australian industrial band SPK took their name from the German Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv. The German SPK was founded in 1970 by a group of psychiatric patients and Dr. Wolfgang Huber, a movement and collective who viewed mental illness as being caused by the capitalist system. The SPK believed the doctor class of psychiatrists needed to be overthrown and no longer in charge of imposing treatment upon those with conditions, but instead partnering with the patients who would themselves take ownership over their own paths forward.
From the SPK publication Turn Illness Into A Weapon:
Illness is the essential condition, illness is the prerequisite and the result of the process of production in the capitalist system (as we just have lined out by some words of Karl Marx). The capitalist process of production is at the same time a process of destruction of life. Life is constantly destroyed while capital is produced. The capitalist system always requires accumulation (Marx), and this is the primary need of capital. Illness is the expression of the life-destroying violence of capitalism. Illness is produced collectively: that is to say that the person who works, by creating the matter capital in the work process that confronts him as an unknown and alien power even though he himself is producing it, produces collectively (together with all the other persons who work in this capitalist process) his own isolation.
Unsurprisingly this was not well received by the powers-that-be and the patients found themselves challenged by the authorities, both from the medical community and the state control apparatus, and Huber was imprisoned in 1972. Upon his release in 1976 he essentially disappeared – the filmmakers behind the 2018 documentary SPK Complex found nothing but rumors about his post-prison life.
The two founding members of the Australian band SPK met while working, unsurprisingly, in a psychiatric ward in 1978. The duo were aware of the German patients’ movement, and hence SPK the industrial band was born. They released a handful of 7″ records in 1979 and their first full-length in 1981. The A side of 1983s Auto-Da-Fé is a collection of tracks previously released on singles in 1979-80 while the B side consists of what are said to be compositions created specifically for this release, making it a sort of quasi-compilation of SPK’s early works. SPK’s music is the sound of insanity, an unraveling of the rational mind as it spirals into fear and anger and rage, the sonic barrage a blending of pulsing instrumentation, industrial pounding, and mechanical rending woven through with anguished vocals. They grate upon your psyche and you only truly realize the effect their having when they come abruptly to an end and you’re left with a short respite of silence in which to collect yourself before the next barrage begins. Naming themselves after they patient’s group SPK is apropos, the musicians taking the sounds of capitalism and using them as a tool to drive a spike into the mind of the listener, becoming it’s own causal factor in altering their mental state.
The above is especially true of the A side. The B side opens with “Metal Field” and sees SPK moving into a more industrial dance area, the beats no longer the pounding of machinery but the sterile pulsing of electronics. Instead of the factory-like assault of the Industrial Revolution we’re now pivoting into the future, the factory automated and less chaotic but no less dangerous to your mental wellbeing. “Walking On Dead Steps” opens with a broadcast of a Hitler speech before the dance beats take over and this time we’re treated to vocals that are actual sung instead of raged at us. The sonic mood is fascist-like, marching boots and staccato delivery, though the synths offer a momentary sense of hope at times.
Oddly enough in 1995 a book was published that covered both SPKs, Trevor Blake’s SPK Krankheit Im Recht 1 SPK/PF(H) Socialist Patients’ Collective Patients’ Front 2 Post-Industrial Band SPK. Put out by the German publisher KRRIM the cover indicates it’s Vol. 1, though I’m unaware of any subsequent volume (the same author put out a book in 1994 called Selected Press Klippings which, I believe, is exclusively about the music group SPK). It can be a tough one to find, and pricey if you do – the only copy on eBay right now is listed for $175 (I think I paid about $50 for mine…). Blake’s book provides extensive documentation from the patient group, including translations of original documents and timelines of events. On the band side, it’s a bit more vague. Interestingly Blake also offers a slightly different version of the meeting of the two original SPK members, indicating that while one did indeed work at the hospital, the other was a sometimes patient diagnosed with schizophrenia.
SPK and SPK. Turn illness into a weapon.