50 Synthesizer Greats
CD re-issue 38 tracks "Still, over 25 years after its initial release, 50 Synthesizer Greats stands up as one of the essential electronic records of Australia’s recorded music history." "A charming selection of pop jingles and featuring some of the best sleevenotes ever..." The Wire - UK Download free mp3's and buy CD 50 Synthesizer Greats from iTunes Clinton Walker writes... After punk flushed out the putrefaction that rock had largely become by the mid-to-late 70s, the three-chord thrasharama quickly became insufficient and the do-it-yourself imperative of punk adapted itself to a number of new alternatives/explorations. One of the most enticing was in a new strain of electronic music. Electronic rock had been prominently pioneered in the early 70s by the likes of Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream and Eno, and it was the infusion of this avant-garde tradition into the do-it-yourself ethic that gave rise to a worldwide wave of post-punk electronic music (that ended up at the extremes of New Romantic synth-pop and experimental industrial noise). Yet while we always hear all about, say, Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire in the UK or Suicide and the Residents in the US, less is heard of the contemporaneous Australian electronic music movement, even though it may be more enduring than the others. In Melbourne in the late 70s/early 80s, things were so wide open that even the pub rock venues were awash with radical, electronic bands. In Sydney bands like the Severed Heads, Systematics and Machinations were isolated outposts, but in Melbourne, electronic music was thriving to such an extent it was even able to sustain several distinct and quite oppositional scenes within a scene. Leaving behind the hippy meanderings of Melbourne's own Krautrock outfit Cybotron, the so-called North Fitzroy Little Bands scene grew out of post-punk electro-rock pioneers Whirlywirld and the Primitive Calculators, and was characterised by its wild, instinctive, very visceral sense of experimentation. If this was expressionism, the scene centered around the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre was contrastingly cerebral, abstract. Although the CHCMC also embraced older guard musicians like David Tolley, its stars were the likes of tch-tch-tch and David Chesworth, who had taken to the mini-Korg like it was the key to a whole new kingdom. David Chesworth in particular set a new standard when, in 1979, he released his debut album 50 Synthesizer Greats. Nobody had ever made a record like this before. Totally devoid of the slickness of, say, Kraftwerk, the album nonetheless had a K-Tel-like sense of kitsch to it that undermined any saccharine sweetness, giving the 37 trax an atmosphere of disquiet that still catches in the ear. This was (and remains) no mere muzak for moderns but something altogether more insidious, and haunting, and is an indication of the vibrancy of post-punk electronic music in Melbourne that the world might only now be catching up with. Clinton Walker Clinton Walker is a Sydney writer whose non-fiction books include Inner City Sound (1981), Highway to Hell (1994), Stranded (1996), Football Life (1998) and Buried Country (2001). His new book Golden Miles will be published next year |
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