Before they made perfectly crafted pop-soul records, Scritti Politti were what was then called an “agitprop” band – though you would not immediately mark them down as left-wing firebrands from their music.

The politics in their music was not immediately evident in debut single Skank Bloc Bologna beyond its title, being a tribute to the traditionally leftist Italian city.

Listening back now, you can hear the seeds of their later incarnation, if only in the way that Green Gartside’s impossibly sweet vocals lend a counterpoint to the spiky postpunk of the band – both elements a far cry from the bands who first fired their imagination.

It was a Sex Pistols gig at Leeds Poly in December 1976 that inspired Green Gartside and Tom Morley, a fellow art school student, to form their own band.

They recruited another old friend, Nial Jinks, and before long they had quit their course and moved down to London to be at the epicentre of the growing punk scene.

For their first single, released on their own St Pancras label, they copied the DiY approach of the Desperate Bicycles, hand printing the paper sleeves and rubber-stamping the labels themselves.

The single was released on their own St Pancras label in 1978 and sold out its run of 2,500 copies, earning them a deal with Rough Trade, who re-released it the following year.

I first saw the Scrits at the Electric Ballroom when they supported Joy Division (along with The Monochrome Set and A Certain Ratio) at the end of August 1978.

You can tell from the lineup how far punk had come from its roots, but there was still a DiY element to the bands, especially the Scrits, who matched their primitive sound palette with (impenetrable) philosophical allusions to intellectual figures in their lyrics

The DiY ethic went as far as their hand-made record sleeves with detailed breakdowns of production costs, including addresses and phone numbers of record pressing plants, and their own Camden squat address for feedback.

They later produced a booklet called “How To Make A Record”, which was given the catalogue number SCRIT 3, and aimed to be a comprehensive guide to recording and releasing a record for aspiring indie artists, based on Scritti Politti’s personal experience of putting out their first three singles independently, plus extra research they’d done on the subject.