A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Syntec - Puppets! (11 October 1992)

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When I was a boy and immersing my time in American adventure TV series and cartoons, one of the tropes that periodically cropped up was the concept of evil mirror images causing havoc, besmirching the good name of the heroes and trying to establish themselves as the superior version. So in Knight Rider, KITT found itself doing battle with the malevolent KARR; In Masters of the Universe, He-Man was pitted against an evil duplicate called Faker and who could forget the fake A-Team?

I was reminded of each of these plot points when listening to Puppets! by German techno-industrialists Syntec, who with their strident, death-metal style vocals and didactic, politicised lyrics sound like aggressive Mr. Hyde to the Pet Shop Boys urbane Dr. Jekyll.  I realise that’s a superficial comparison, but I wish that the UK charts had allowed for the hypothesis to be tested in late 1992/early 1993. Maybe not in comparison to anything from the Pet Shop Boys Very album, but to hear the bite and snap of a track like Puppets! when set against the blandness of most chart dance from the period would at least have made the chart a more interesting proposition than it was at the time.

Syntec came to Peel’s attention due to them having two tracks on a Machinery Records compilation album of unsigned German techno-industrial artists called Jung Machines Vol.1.  Peel’s copy came with a letter from someone at Machinery called Anna who wrote simply, ‘Hi sir, Do you like the music or don’t you? Just tell me!’ -Well I like some of it.” He also read out the label’s notes on Syntec which described them as “A band based on the traditions of punk, thrash and Kraftwerk.” They were seemingly everywhere that week.

Video courtesy of on on.