Spaces

Philip Brophy’s → ↑ → (pronounced ‘tch tch tch’) were the arch conceptualists in Australian post-punk, informed by postmodernism and post-structuralist thought; for Spaces, their debut album, they pulled together a collection of pieces that soundtracked the Robert Randall and Frank Bendinelli work of the same name, which translated Australian modernist paintings to video art. → ↑ → responds to the brief with minimalist flair, writing simple, hypnotically spiralling motifs for electronics, percussion, guitar, voice and brass, and then letting them play out over five to eight minutes. You know what you’re getting from the first half minute of each song, but there’s something oddly pleasurable in this hyper-functional muzak.