Test Dept. (GB)
From London
Popularity
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About
Also known as: T.D.A., Test Department, Test Dept
Test Dept built their reputation on turning scrap metal and industrial machinery into percussive weapons, and the results were genuinely unlike anything else coming out of Britain in the early 1980s. Signed to Some Bizzare Records alongside Depeche Mode, Soft Cell and Einstürzende Neubauten, they staged massive, high energy performances in places like Paddington station maintenance depots and Stirling Castle, often paired with film and slide projections. Their political convictions were central to everything: they recorded with the South Wales Striking Miners Choir during the 1984 miners strike, and the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act of 1994 only sharpened their edge further. The New York Times singled out The Unacceptable Face of Freedom for its sophisticated sound collage work, and the band kept pushing into techno territory through the 1990s before splitting in 1997. They came back in 2014 as Test Dept Redux, commissioning large scale film installations and eventually releasing the album Disturbance in 2019 on One Little Independent Records, alongside their entire back catalogue.
