David Chesworth – Maydena Creek

The new solo album from Australian post-punk iconoclast David Chesworth, renowned for his 80s groups Essendon Airport and Whadya Want?, alongside four decades of composition and sound art. Named after a creek beneath a Tasmanian rainforest, a recording of which briefly appears, Maydena Creek combines subterranean vibrations, modern distortions and surreal imagery into a hallucinatory work.

In a typically Chesworthian move, the music brings together two unlikely technologies: the quirky 1970s Fun Machine organ, with its drum machine and chord generator, and the more egg-headed Moog Subharmonicon, inspired by early 20th-century instruments such as the Trautonium and Rhythmicon. Together they generate his characteristic polyrhythms and deep harmonic undertones.

The result is off-kilter but strangely catchy electronic pop with an experimental sensibility. Maydena Creek also marks Chesworth’s return to singing on three tracks, following decades of instrumental composition and collaborations with other vocalists.