My Personal Journey through Post-punk, Art, Music and Radio
3. The Loop Orchestra and Endless Recordings
In 1986, The Loop Orchestra began its own record label, appropriately titled Endless Recordings. We were very keen to release the work of our fellow member and dubmeister, Sheriff Lindo (Anthony Maher) who had been busy recording his own brand of dub music in his home studio. We all loved reggae dub music and were very impressed and supportive of Anthony's music. We firmly believed that his music was as good as anything being produced overseas. I designed the front cover after Anthony had decided to call the record "Ten Dubs That Shook the World". We all chipped in to get the record made. The master tape was put together with the assistance of Mr Severed Heads, Tom Ellard, who was a friend and supporter of The Loop Orchestra, especially since Richard Fielding came up with the idea while being in Severed Heads. We had 500 copies made and another friend of ours, Graeme Revelll of SPK attended the cutting of the record to provide us with some much-needed guidance, as we had never done anything like this before. So in other words we really utilised our friends who had experience. Due to not having a record distributor, it took us about 10 to 15 years to sell the records, which are now collectors' items.
We finally released a record by The Loop Orchestra in 1991. Since the inception of The Loop Orchestra in 1982 we had done all our recordings and rehearsals at Anthony Maher's house, in his home studio. We called the record "Suspense". The cover was designed by our friend, Art Brut maker, Anthony Mannix. The record also included copies of seven little drawings which Anthony had done while we pieced the record together at Anthony Maher's house. The writing on the back cover was done by Anthony Maher, keeping in character and style with Anthony Mannix's writing and front cover design. I had always had a very keen interest in the use and construction of music for film, particularly suspense and horror films. The piece Suspense (side A) was constructed from Tape Loops Made from Music for Suspense and Horror movies. In 1988 we did two live performances (at First Draft Gallery in Chippendale in Sydney and at Street Level Gallery in Penrith) of Suspense accompanied by 60 black and white slides of images from suspense and horror movies from the 1940s to the 1980s, these were projected by my dear friend Lucy Aspinall, who died tragically in a car accident in 1994. She was only 29 years old. Some of Lucy's photographs can be seen on The Loop Orchestra web site (see below) and on the inside of our CD (mentioned below). We performed this again in 1991 at the launch of the record at the AFI cinema in Paddington. Again, Anthony Maher mastered the record at his home studio in Seven Hills in Sydney. We have very slowly sold these records and now have, in 2003 only 10 copies remaining, out of 500.
In 1997, after The Loop Orchestra performance of Bride, utilising tape Loops made from the music by Franz Waxman to the 1936 film Bride of Frankenstein, with video projection of a segment of the film, Peter Doyle and Anthony Maher decided to leave The Loop Orchestra. I was very determined that The Loop Orchestra had such enormous potential that Richard and I must continue and find a third member. That new member came in the guise of Patrick Gibson whom we both knew and who was very involved in the Sydney scene of experimental music, radio and film. I had met him many years before when he was lead singer of the Sydney electronic pop band The Systematics. He has a voice like an Australian version of William S. Burroughs. Patrick had joined The Loop Orchestra in 1995 but now we were a threesome.
We did our first performance together in 1998 during The What Is Music Festival, at Artspace. The piece utilised tape Loops made from sounds created by the BBC radiophonic workshop, mainly in the 1950s and 60s when they experimented a lot with our favourite medium, namely, magnetic tape for various BBC radio documentaries, plays and readings. It was really our homage to the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
We had recorded all of our live performances and so in 1999, being 8 years since the release of our first recording we thought it was well and truly truly time for our first CD. We called the CD "The Analog Years", in fact all of our work was and is Analog. In subsequent years Richard, Patrick and I incorporated two other members, Hamish McKenzie in 2001 and most recently Emanuel Gasparinatos (2003).
There is an update of The Loop Orchestra story in section 11, the last section of this written piece.
A detailed history, full list of performances, sound samples, photos and flyers are available on The Loop Orchestra web site
