Spill Compilation One
Released: 1992
The first Spill comp was several years in the making due to a couple of false starts as I moved between cities. Finally in 91/92 I put aside a couple of months and got the thing happening. I compiled it at home on a high-quality cassette deck - this seemed reasonable back then. 26 songs on 100 minute cassette, later rereleased on cdr. Click on songs to download, or grab the entire album.
1. VOLVOX .. def whitlam .. 4:23 .. mp3
Volvox were the performance-art kings of Australia in the early 90s. I first heard inklings of the band while living in Diena Georgetti's warehouse in Brunswick in 1991. Ex-Brisbane audio maverick Glenn Norman stayed with us for a while. He was receiving letters from the interestingly-named Lester Vat, who was on his way to Melbourne to start his new music project - Volvox - which was to include Glenn and ex-Grong Grong member Dave Taskas. Volvox's first live show was at a party at this same house later that year. It consisted of ten or fifteen people moving about the house in a kind of swarm, making noises with garden hoses and homemade instruments. I'd seen some of these people before at Melbourne's Sod Club in the 80s. The disabled Anthony Riddell aka "Lester" was an astonishing stage performer and lyricist. It was obvious that this group represented the cutting edge of experimental music in Australia and I was very happy to receive this recording for the first Spill comp later that year.
2. THE DEEP END .. glowing dark .. 2:37 .. mp3
Short-lived recording project involving members of Brisband The Closesthing.
3. WONDROUS FAIR .. dying frame .. 3:07 .. mp3
By the time this compilation was in production, Wondrous Fair were senior statespeople of Brisbane music. I saw them play a few times in the mid 80s, and some of them earlier as members of Tangled Shoelaces. A couple had academic music backgrounds - the Mackerras brothers were from a famous musical family. In my view these guys pretty much invented the "indie pop with jazz and orchestral instruments" genre, which twenty years later has become popular. To this WF added a dash of hippy and what would now be called twee. This was not an easy act to deliver in beer-and-brawl Bjelke-Petersen Brisbane but they stuck to their guns and released several albums over a career of around 10 years. The band has posthumously received a MySpace site - go there for more songs and information. Singer Deb Cavallaro now fronts Brisband the Golden Circles.
4. HE DARK AGE .. the gaybley tryouts .. 3:02 .. mp3
This was the late 80s band of Paul Newsome, infamous in Brisbane for his early 80s experimental act Pork, and Tony Milner, ex Swell Guys, No-V-Bleet, and Machines That Walk.
5. FARFISAS IN EXILE .. whilst we patiently wait your demise .. 4:23 .. mp3
A sound project by Brisbane visual artist Mark Wolter, sadly now deceased.
6. THE HOLY GHOSTS .. million miles .. 4:21 .. mp3
Band consisting of Eugene Carchesio (gtr, vox), Clare McKenna (drums) and Ian Wadley (bass) who played from about 87 to 91, supported Venom P. Stinger and Sonic Youth in Brisbane, and toured Melbourne. Bizarrely, a number of other bands have appeared since then with this same name. Recently a myspace page has appeared for this band.
7. RUBY'S SPLEEN .. lounge discounter .. 6:43 .. mp3
Melbournians the Tale of Ruby's Spleen included Janine Stanton on vocals and violin, Irena Kroll on keyboards (later a member of San Jose Cow Muzak), Dan Persse on drums, vocals and bass, Tim Lines, who currently plays in a punk-surf band, Christine Thirkell who played in several other groups including San Jose Cow Muzak, New Waver and BamBooSel, and occasionally Glenn Norman.
8. THE BLACK ORCHIDS .. sally's dynamo .. 3:19 .. mp3
This Perth band Danny Ruggero (later of Kitty Magic), Sioux Baker, and David Gerard, famous in Perth and indie scenes generally for his fanzine Party Fears, which was posthumously given a West Australian Music Industry award.
9. CHYME .. chyme .. 1:40 .. mp3
Solo project by Brisbanian Adam Park, who had a notable early 90s career in Melbourne in Volvox and the first lineup of New Waver, before returning to Brisbane where he plays in a number of sound-art projects to this day.
10. LOVE SOURCE .. snoked .. 3:59 .. mp3
Brisbane/Japan indie pop band.
11. INSIDE OUT .. another day .. 3:20 .. mp3
A solo guitar-and-drums recording project by my brother Ian.
12. NEW WAVER .. addicted to wheat .. 3:41 .. mp3
This was my music/progaganda project. It grew out of my collage/progaganda project "Loser Magazine". At the time of this recording NW had released a couple of cassettes but had not become a live act. The lyrics on this one refer to food addiction, in the sense of 'bread and circuses'.
13. D.N.E. .. composition for saxaphone and guitar #34 .. 1:16 .. mp3
An ongoing solo project by Brisbane artist/musician Eugene Charchesio, who is currently playing in Brisbane bands such as the Lost Domain.
14. SMALL WORLD EXPERIENCE .. too far gone .. 2:31 .. mp3
A long-running Brisbane band fronted by Pat Ridgewell who helped to invent the concept and sound we now call "indie" - or at least its Australian post-1990 thread (Pat disclaims this but I'll stand by it). Pat had played in 80s Brisbands Curiosity Shop, This Five Minutes, and Dog Fish Cat Bird. He formed SWE around 1989 and immediately released a 7” ep, and then a cassette album from which this song is taken. Pat is currently working on a new SWE release. See SWE website.
15. DEVOTION .. everything's true .. 5:49 .. mp3
At the time of this recording Devotion was a solo project by Glenn of Volvox. He was later joined by Jim Mackay, and they became a live act. Glenn, as always ten years ahead of his time, had started mixing Asian music samples over hiphop beats: a concept which was to become very fashionable after Glenn had long switched to abstract sound art, which later became very fashionable etc etc ...
16. NEIL ARMSTRONG EXPERIENCE .. last light in my eye .. 1:03 .. mp3
A Brisband which flared briefly in the early 90s and featured Greg Hilleard who later achieved indie/experimental rock fame in Brisband Tripod (unrelated to the current comedy band of the same name) and now plays in the Lost Domain.
17. TRIPLE BEAN .. blood in my eye .. 3:12 .. mp3
Mysterious Brisbane sound art producer.
18. THE HOORAY HENRYS .. spin out .. 3:21 .. mp3
This motley collection of Brisbane indie personalities became a popular live band for a while mostly playing covers, such as this one. I didn't want to include covers on the compilation but HH had a real vibe happening so I relented.
19. GOBBLE-GOBBLE .. the disenchanted forest .. 2:25 .. mp3
Brisbane mid-80s jazz-punk outfit driven by the bass-lines of Mark Zervoudakis, with Eugene Carchesio on guitar, violinist Jeanette Gilfedder, Ian Wadley on drums, and before I moved to Melbourne, me on synthesizer. Mark had been involved in the Brisbane punk scene from around 1980. The band toured Melbourne in 1988, playing with such luminaries as Fungus Brains.
20. THE GATEKEEPERS .. happy still .. 2:22 .. mp3
Peter Jetnikoff and I started this band in Brisbane around 1983, after he had left the first band I was in - the Pits. We played a few shows and recorded a few things before Peter moved to Melbourne in 1985 and I did two years later. We played and recorded here in the late 80s with my brother Ian on drums, before devolving to a recording-only project. Peter wrote the songs and did guitar and vox, while I played bass and did the odd backing vocal. A few years later we pretty much swapped roles to form the live version of New Waver.
21. WANK ENGINE .. dial tones that changed history .. 3:02 .. mp3
The solo project of Brisbane (and occasionally Melbourne) personality Richard Hagen.
22. NNEGATIV KIL .. xzloktz .. 3:41 .. mp3
Early 90s Melbourne sound-art duo consisting of Tom Fielding and Glenn Norman. 'Occupying the space that would otherwise be filled by rock'.
23. ALIEN VIRUS .. turning of the sun .. 4:36 .. mp3
A popular punk band in Brisbane in the late 80s and early 90s.
24. WILL ROBINSON TRIO .. the gulf .. 5:24 .. mp3
A Melbourne trio who, as far as I know, did not play or record much after this compilation was released. I liked this song for its timely lyrics and sense of doom.
25. CRABSTICK .. speed kills .. 5:12 .. mp3
One of the classic Australian lo-fi indie bands, featuring Mike and Dave Nichols, and Danny Butt, now a writer in New Zealand. This is a cover of a Dead C song from the late 80s.
26. PUPPENSPIEL .. accordion melody .. 2:56 .. mp3
A brief but musically advanced Bris/Melb gathering which included a young Martin Mackerras, before his rise to fame as an Australian new-music composer, his girlfriend Jenny, my brother Ian, and Julian Harris, later of Brisband the Golden Circles and now of Melbourne/Japan group Human Six Billion.
from Greg Wadley in Melbourne, Australia