Planam / Italy / 2014
"Italy's always-intriguing Planam Records unearth two incredible suites of modular music by (then) 20 year old sound artist, David Chesworth, recorded in Melbourne 1979. Pictured standing next to La Trobe University's massive and rare Serge Tcherepnin modular synthesiser and looking like a kid in a candy shop on the cover, Chesworth's cheesy grin is symbolic of the endearingly naive and almost pop-wise modular music on the LP. As David would soon go on to release post punk, pop, and synth music with his ensemble and groups such as Essendon Airport and → ↑ → via his Innocent label and the influential Clifton Hill community music centre, we can hear these pieces as skeletal foundations for a far reaching and award-winning oeuvre which nowadays sees David as one of Australia's foremost sound and installation artists. The first side offers four pieces of minimalist but rich bass plongs, pirouetting blips and arcing sinewaves evolving from self-sustaining patches with playful sense of rhythm and tone, whilst the B-side side suite of 'Five Evolutionary Things' is more probing and spaced out, with pretty wild pulses in part 4 and an almost eldritch feel to Part 5 reminding of Mike Ratledge's 'Riddles Of The Sphinx'."