A cult classic of sci-fi dystopia, "Decoder" (1984) saw EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN's members working alongside GENESIS P-ORRIDGE (THROBBING GRISTLE / PSYCHIC TV) and WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS. It's one of the strangest (and most prescient) films of the decade. The film was made in Hamburg and Berlin, and directed by Muscha (who directed several punk films).

The lead roles are played by Christiane F and FM Einheit from Neubauten, who also contributed to the film's score. Genesis P-Orridge, the kingpin of the English industrial scene, also appears as a priest of the Black Noise faith. Author William S. Burroughs portrays an insurrectionist salesman of audio equipment, and American cult actor Bill Rice plays a detective. MATT JOHNSON from THE THE wrote a frenetic, deformed song for the film that is both fantastic and painful to listen to, but DAVE BALL (SOFT CELL) and Genesis P-Orridge composed the rest of the soundtrack. A futuristic film, and a joyous application of William S. Burroughs' "The Electronic Revolution", which proposes a seditious and rather poetic method of subverting the masses and inciting them to rise up against the forces of order.

Ball and P-Orridge shrewdly hijack elevator music for their own ends: alongside loops taken from actual muzak records are synths that pump out slow, almost funky grooves, a few jazzy spirals of piano notes intertwined with bleeps, samples, grinding sounds, reverb and whispers that could be either sensual or menacing. "Decoder" rejoices in its dialectic between "muzak" and "black noise" in various ways, looking to take as many liberties and make as many exaggerations as it can get away with.