Palimpsest, by Essendon Airport

Palimpsest

by Essendon Airport

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1.	Correct Pitch 01:00	buy track
2.	No Quarter 03:17	buy track
3.	Re-funkt 04:15	buy track
4.	I feel a song coming on 03:35	buy track
5.	Jig 04:07	buy track
6.	Like Young 04:29	buy track
7.	Trad Jazz 01:24	buy track
8.	Science of Sound intro 00:32	buy track
9.	Science Of Sound 03:06	buy track
10.	Beguine 04:15	buy track
11.	What is this thing called funk? 04:21	buy track
12.	Rhythm Method 02:53	buy track
13.	Entrance of the Gladiators 03:21	buy track
14.	Happy Ending 02:41	buy track
15.	Bouncy Bouncy 02:43	buy track
16.	B52 02:57	buy track
17.	Thirds 03:07	buy track
18.	Fragment...Waiting 02:18	buy track
19.	Seven 02:54	buy track
20.	Two Different Worlds 03:10	buy track
21.	Waltzing in the Clouds 03:22	buy track
22.	Aversion 04:22	buy track
23.	Playschool 02:24	buy track
24.	Oi 1234 03:54	buy track
25.	Vistas for Emotion 03:13	buy track
26.	Martial Art 04:19	buy track
27.	Blame it on the Jacksons 03:12	buy track
28.	Bland 03:48	buy track
29.	What I Like about Disco 04:21	buy track
30.	Rock the Falafel Bar 04:27	buy track
31.	Transfusional Express 03:07	buy track
32.	Let's Get Funktional 03:31	buy track

about

In 2011, Chapter released a 30th anniversary reissue of Palimpsest, the one and only album by Melbourne post-punk icons Essendon Airport. Recorded in December 1981, Palimpsest is now reborn as a double album with a whole bonus suite of live and unreleased studio recordings spanning 1980-83.
Formed in 1978 as a mimimalist duo of guitarist Robert Goodge and keyboardist David Chesworth, Essendon Airport released their landmark 7” EP Sonic Investigations Of the Trivial on Chesworth’s Innocent Records in 1979. Chapter Music reissued Sonic Investigations way back in 2002, as a CD including second single Talking To Cleopatra (with vocalist Anne Cessna) and a raft of bonus tracks.
Originally gentle and inquisitive, with beats supplied by a drum machine built from plans printed in an electronics magazine, Essendon Airport began to expand after Sonic Investigations and explore the possibilities of rhythm. First came classically-untrained drummer Paul Fletcher, and then saxophonist Ian Cox, to form the four piece lineup heard on Palimpsest
With its dryly intoned vocals, flailing polyrhythms and a post- modern fascination with appropration and quotation, the album is an eccentric post-punk classic. The album title means “a manuscript page from which the text has been scraped off to be used again”, while the original liner notes state “all” “songs” “written” “and” “produced” “by” “Essendon Airport”.
After Palimpsest, Essendon Airport added bassist Barbara Hogarth and grew to become one of inner city Melbourne’s premiere live attractions. “Creative differences”, however, saw them disband in 1983, with Cox, Goodge and Hogarth forming I’m Talking that same year with singer Kate Ceberano. The bonus material collates 18 previously unheard recordings, from the duo period to the impressively muscular, previously undocumented five piece lineup.
The original 1982 vinyl version of Palimpsest was presented in a screen-printed plastic cover, and for the CD version it has been faithfully replicated as a nifty clear plastic overlay.

credits

released August 27, 2011

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Essendon Airport Melbourne, Australia

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