Sonic Investigations (Of The Trivial)

Arch conceptualists and dedicated pop minimalists, Melbourne’s Essendon Airport started out as a duo for guitarist Robert Goodge and composer/keyboardist David Chesworth. Part of the playfully studious milieu around the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre, Essendon Airport embraced kitsch and irony, but never to the detriment of the music itself; on this, their debut EP, they make a quixotic kind of systems pop, the rattling organ and clacking drum machine as spindly as Young Marble Giants, but with all the intrigue and curiosity of later groups like Stereolab and Pram. The EP was reissued as a full-length in 2002 by Chapter Music, compiled with extra unreleased material, and their brilliantly warped non-pop single with Anne Cessna, “Talking To Cleopatra.”