MOR

About the album

Essendon Airport began as a duo in Melbourne in 1978, formed by David Chesworth on Wurlitzer electric piano and Robert Goodge on guitar, accompanied by a home-made drum machine. Their music embraced minimalism, repetition, irony, and experimentation. 1979 debut EP Sonic Investigations of the Trivial exemplified their approach, described by the band as ‘songs which combine many of the most facile and insipid kinds of music in a redeemingly dignified manner’. 

The duo's earliest appearances were at the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre – an emerging hub for experimental sound, performance, and film – before taking their distinct minimalism to Melbourne’s emerging inner-city post-punk venues such as the Crystal Ballroom. They collaborated with vocalist Anne Cessna for a now-feted single Talking To Cleopatra in 1980, then expanded to a more energetic live four piece, releasing their quintessential album Palimpsest in 1982. Soon they grew again to a five piece, embracing funk and becoming one of inner city Melbourne’s premiere live attractions before disbanding in 1983. 

Chapter Music reissued Sonic Investigations + Talking to Cleopatra on CD in 2002, and Palimpsest in 2011.
 
More than four decades since first disbanding, Essendon Airport's 21st century incarnation features original collaborators David Chesworth and Robert Goodge, early 80s bandmates Paul Fletcher (percussion) and Barbara Hogarth (bass), plus pedal steel guitarist Graham Lee (The Triffids, KLF). 
 
For new album MOR, this quintet re-engage with their early minimalist work, revisiting songs from the Sonic Investigations era in expanded full band arrangements. They also offer up one newly composed track, the delicately inquisitive Malibu. The result is a lush, elegant update of these beautifully hypnotic and meditative compositions, full of atmosphere and melody, but still imbued with the band's trademark off-kilter sense of experimentation and wonder.