Sinan Leong Revell is best known as the voice of SPK’s most successful single, “Metal Dance.” She cowrote it with Graeme Revell as part of the band’s shift from the industrial work site to the alternative dancefloor. Her severe image – high cheekbones and short-cropped hair, Judy Blume jewellery and leather dresses – subverted the glamour of the 80s and confronted the intolerant and Sinophobic.
There was a lot of intolerance about when SPK took shape – both in their Australian base and their adopted English borough of Vauxhall. It didn’t disappear when they relocated to California so Graeme could pursue a very successful career making soundtracks for major studios. The microaggressions just changed their accents.
Graeme’s Hollywood success came at a price for Sinan and the conventional family unit they were building. The demands of work took Graeme away and delivered him into the arms of other women. As Sinan tells the story, she was left to raise two children and decorate their expensive houses with tasteful art, while her husband promoted the careers of other – younger, whiter – women.
In this, she sees a continuous thread running through the maternal line of her family. Born in China and raised in Australia by Chinese parents, she broke with tradition in her youth and as a member of the SPK collective. When her utility ran low, she found herself returned to the place reserved for Chinese women by the patriarchy. At least, there was a place saved for her, which she was determined not to accept.
Sinan had to give up her musical career, her villa, and (thanks to the California fires of 2025) her recorded history. Her biography, Metal, Music, SPK, is an attempt to catch up. It is full of anecdotes from her life, including as an actress, model, and performer. It has large sections of photographs that document SPK’s arrival in the UK as celebrated metal-bashers. Graciously, it does not take aim at Depeche Mode for “borrowing” the band’s look and sound for “People Are People.”
The book also serves to tell the story of Sinan’s work in dance, paint, collage, and photography. A theme that the reader is constantly pulled towards, irrespective of the media, is her relationship with her mother. Her identity is tied to the woman who raised her and never had time to learn English. Buried in an unmarked grave by her family, she would be a passing presence, but Sinan stands in the way of erasure through her art and narrative.
In the end, SPK was more about Graeme; but, as the book reveals, Sinan’s identity transcends both the band and the ex-husband. She honours them as part of her heritage and memory, but the tapestry of her life is woven with many other threads, as well. They appear in brilliant colours across each page.
