Decoder Soundtrack Returns After 33 Years

On September 19, Cold Spring will release the original score on CD and digital formats.

A collaborative collision of punk, industrial and experimental impulses, the soundtrack brought together Genesis P-Orridge, Dave Ball, Einstürzende Neubauten members, and William S. Burroughs. Burroughs appeared not only on screen but also contributed spoken elements that bleed into the music. FM Einheit carried a dual role as lead actor and composer, while Christiane Felscherinow embodied the film’s other central figure.

The compilation features Seedy Films from Soft Cell, Three Orange Kisses From Kazan recorded by Matt Johnson as The The, and Compressed Metal by Einstürzende Neubauten. Additional tracks were composed by Dave Ball, Jon Caffery, and Genesis P-Orridge.

Shot between Hamburg and Berlin, the film was deeply entangled with the era’s punk networks while staging concepts outlined in Burroughs’ The Electronic Revolution. That text sketched out methods of sound-based mass control and disruption—ideas that Decoder simultaneously dramatized and enacted.

Within the narrative, P-Orridge assumed the role of a priest of the Black Noise cult, while Burroughs appeared as an insurgent audio equipment salesman. Bill Rice joined in as a detective figure. The resulting work was never just a soundtrack—it became a document of shared aesthetic and political strategies of its time.

Cold, abrasive, and still resonant: Decoder continues to map the thresholds between stage and street, fiction and praxis. ✪