Test Dept.: Terra Firma

This the kind of music that probably sounds great when performed in a disused railway works in Glasgow, Test Dept's preferred kind of venue, with massed percussionists striking poses that have their drama amplified when projected as shadows by stark lighting. In our back bedroom, even with the volume turned up, it's just a little lame.

Terra Firma came out only a year or two after The Unacceptable Face of Freedom, but it seems to come from a different time and country. The Miners' Strike is over and the direct anger focused on a tangible target has been replaced by a much more generalised, not to say wishy-washy, mystical dis-ease. To give you an idea, the lyrics include stuff like "All nations, all peoples, all tongues, let's try to live". Next stop: "Ebony and ivory…"

The most enjoyable bit is on Current Affairs where they play the Panorama title music. And once more we have creative sleeve notes, which for this track run as follows:

John arrives back from a hard day at the office, just in time to catch the live satellite pictures of the latest global flashpoint being beamed into his home. As the on-the-spot correspondent gives his urgent commentary over the images flickering on the screen, John settles comfortably into his artificial animal skin armchair to focus on the important events unravelling before his eyes.

Leaving aside the inanity of this scenario, it brings back the Robert Hughes quote about dated visions of the future. "Beaming", "correspondent", "artificial animal skin", "arcmchair"?! It's as though this writer never heard of the internet, the organic/fairtrade movements, lean-forward or citizen-generated-media.

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