Test Dept: DS30 Tour with Book Launch, Test Dept DJs + Twitch (Optimo)

Celebrate the Glasgow launch of Total State Machine, a major historical document of Test Dept, published by PC–Press at Aye Aye Books. The book will be available for purchase at the event and refreshments will be available.

From 10pm, join Test Dept DJs and Twitch (Optimo) in Saramago Cafe Bar until late to celebrate the end of DS30 tour of the North of England and Scotland, with the final showing at the GFT at 6pm on Friday.

Test Dept formed in the decaying docklands of South London in 1981. The group made raw, visceral music out of re-purposed scrap metal and machinery from industrial waste ground and derelict factories; a percussive sound with a political edge performed live against monumental slide and film projections in recently abandoned industrial spaces. Drilling, pounding, grinding, metal bashing – a Constructivist/Futurist-inspired soundtrack to the death throes of industrial Britain.

Commissioned by AV Festival in 2014, the film was originally presented within the monumental lines of Dunston Staiths, a structure built on the River Tyne in 1893 to ship coal from the Durham coalfields to the world.