Last week, instead of Bumbershoot and bars, we stayed in and nerded it up with 'Made In Sheffield,' 2002's long-needed documentary about the post-punk and new wave experiments of bands from Sheffield, England such as The Human League, Cabaret Voltaire, The Extras, Comsat Angels, ABC, and Pulp.

For an interesting, low-key piece of pop-culture propaganda, the core story is actually believable. Sheffield always did have a unique sort of music personality. While the city's aging industrial climate has lead to a claustrophobia for youth frustrated to escape, just like endless others around the world, its people, particularly in the late '70s and early '80s, got away from it all through strangeness and futurism rather than clichés and rage.

Nearly thirty years on, Cabaret Voltaire's The Voice Of America is one of the most harrowing after-drug freakshows of shattered song-structures, nauseously modulated monologues, hostile searches for revolution, and single-tone sonic attacks. The early albums by The Human League are still extraordinary little things that pit unsettling but barely understood synthesizers against bright pop music like new wave Roman emperor-droids of blue-eyed soul.

Sheffield often flies just enough under the radar that you might never connect its bands, who you could've listened to for most of your life, with the same hometown. Which doesn't have to be a bad thing.

It's more than a city just elevating its own fiction. Although removed from the generation and thousands of miles away, you can still hear Sheffield's voice, and how it probably was never more clear as it was then. The city's been less consistent since: for every Moloko or LFO, there's 65daysofstatic and the Arctic Monkeys. But the voice remains there, if you listen. Difficult to define, but easy to enjoy, and yet another ingredient in the overall sound of post-war England just as much as London or Liverpool or Manchester or Leeds.

Don't assume 'Made In Sheffield' will demonstrate any of this.

'Made In Sheffield' is discouraging. It's ropey. It clocks in at only an hour. 'Made In Sheffield' is a documentary in the sense that there are interviews with a handful of the key musicians — mostly Philip Oakey, Chris Watson, and Jarvis Cocker — and ridiculously sparse footage of old riots and album artwork. Considering such a relatively niche subject-matter, it's good that a film on Sheffield's music exists, especially one so well-intentioned. But like John Dower's 2003 Britpop film 'Live Forever' or Lara Lee's 2004 electronic music film 'Modulations: Cinema For The Ear', there's no sense of history or flow and what little you're offered makes it feel more like leftovers from another film. What's there is good, but there's not enough of it. Total wasted opportunity.

For a better glimpse of Sheffield, thanks to Brian Geoghagan, run right over to Damon Fairclough's heroically personal write-ups "Destroyed By Gods," which covers the city's after-punk Year Zero, and "Brain Aided Dancing," which covers the more modern and dance-cultural voices released under the art-directors Designers Republic.

"Destroyed By Gods":

Some bands just had to come from a certain place. Others just happened to be there. The latter are often confused with the former — but it's the former that make city music scenes matter. It's a mysterious thing, but I'm afraid it seems true, that some cities take on a musical form and sing while others just offer up lists of bands that are... well... just lists of bands. Sheffield is a city that does exist in this ephemeral form. Its sound is industry. It's pop. It's electronic. And it's raw. It's a narrative with its feet on the ground and its head in the clouds. Somewhere, without or within, it's glamorous — but like all the best glamour, it only comes out at night.

"Brain Aided Dancing":

This was a Republic with two leaders, two citizens, two workers. Namely, Ian Stirling Anderson and Nicholas Giles Phillips. They had a handful of record sleeve designs to their name, a studio that was barely six months old...and yet, every statement they made was loaded with a palpable sense of destiny. This was no pub-corner chinwag; these weren't the purveyors of idle doodles, designers who just did a few bits for their mates. This interview bore witness to the birth of something self-consciously brilliant. It was part manifesto, part political broadcast, but framed as a gleaming corporate ID. They were giving local indie bands an image that was positively inflammable; but in turn, they were swiping the limelight for themselves.

And hey! Fairclough's made a mix for each.

"Destroyed By Gods"
[Pulp, The Human League, Sweet Exorcist, All Seeing I, Cabaret Voltaire, etc.]

"Brain Aided Dancing"
[Moloko, Age Of Chance, Sun Electric, Pop Will Eat Itself, Subsonic, etc.]

At least we know who should do the sequel.