An amazing doc I watched last month and forgot to share (and got reminded of it by Sumez's Gary Numan post) is the BBC joint
Synth Britannia. I'm guessing most people interested in post punk/new wave/synth pop/early industrial know about it already. It is a crucial watch IMO. I'm pretty knowledgeable when it comes to those genres but I still learned a bunch of stuff. There's a lot of artists I already knew well about, such as : Kraftwerk, Einstürzende Neubauten, Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle, Suicide, Gary Numan, Joy Division/New Order, Ultravox, Human League, Soft Cell, Depeche Mode.
But thanks to this doc I discovered OMD and The Normal, two crucial early acts in this revolution of bands who ditched guitars completely and went all synth, right as synths became smaller and more affordable (some of those bands even bought boards and components and made their own synth!) and pushed by the punk ethos to just damn it all and get up on stage to play. Also learned more about Mute records, owned by The Normal's Daniel Miller, and it's major role in this revolution. And the bit about the soundtrack of A Clockwork Orange probably influencing this scene was neat too, I had never thought about it but some pieces in that movie are synth only, which is truly trailblazing for 1971, so it does make sense. The film depicts a violent, concrete-jungle England too so it its the right mindset as well.
It blows my mind how ahead of it's time The Normal's Single/EP was. Completely sick!
The dissonant 2-step of
Warm Leatherette is completely nuts for 1978, and the lyrics are classic too. Based on J. G. Ballard's novel
Crash and it's theme of car-crash-followed-by-sex fetish. Really catched lightning in a bottle there.
"A tear of petrol,
Is in your eye,
The hand brake,
Penetrates your thigh
Quick,
let's make love,
Before we die.
On warm. Leatherette.
Warm. Leatherette."
The other song,
T.V.O.D. is great as well. Also has cool lyrics.
"I don't need a
TV screen,
I just stick the aerial
Into my skin"