Silent Recordings
Unpredictable Music for
Unreliable Times

Artists:

CODA
Prop
Telemetry Orchestra
Tracky Dax

Compilations:

Around The Block
Nocturnal Emissions
Silent Soundtracks
Sounds of Silent
This Show Is About People

Rouseabout Records
Keeping it Real

Artists:

Bondi Cigars
Cathie O'Sullivan
Colin Dryden
Creedence Clearwater Revisited
The Celebrated Knackers & Knockers Band
Donna Fisk and Michael Cristian
Eric Bogle
Fiddlers Feast
Gary Shearston
Gordon Lightfoot
Herb Superb
Johnny Wade
Jim Low
John Munro
Julie Wilson
Koori Classic
Kym Pitman
Marcus Holden
Mic Conway's National Junk Band
Ngarukuruwala
Nyalgodi Scotty Martin
Robyn Archer
Roger Knox
Russell Morris
The Newtown Rugby League Football Club Song
Warren Fahey & Luke Webb
Warren Fahey & Max Cullen (DEAD MEN TALKING)

Compilations:

Before the Boomerang Came Back
Down By The Billabong
The World Turned Upside-Down
Forte – Golden Fiddlers
Stand Up & Shout

Yesterday's Australia:

Barbara James
Bob Dyer
Bobby Limb
Buddy Williams
Dame Nellie Melba
Florence Austral
Frank Coughlan
John Brownlee
Johnny Ashcroft
Keith Branch & His South Sea Islanders

Percy Grainger
Reg Lindsay
Shirley Thoms
Smoky Dawson
Strella Wilson
Tex Morton
Tex Morton and Sister Dorrie
Warren Fahey's Diggers

Yesterday's Australia Compilations:

Australian Radio Serials
Australian Hillbilly Radio Hits
Australian Stars of the International Music Hall Voume 1
Australian Stars of the International Music Hall Voume 2
Band in a Waistcoat Pocket
Mastertouch Pianola
Strike up the Band
Stars of Australian Stage & Radio Vol 1
Stars of Australian Stage & Radio Vol 2

Yep! Records
Music Without Compromise

Artists:

Antenna
Jenny Morris
Michal Nicholas
The Lovetones
Saints of India
Screw the Pooch
sounditout
Southend
Spaceniks

Antenna

Antenna was the product of a short-lived collaboration between ex-Scientist/Beast of Bourbon/Surrealist Kim Salmon, chief Hoodoo Guru Dave Faulkner and Stuart McCarthy and Justin Frew of techno/house outfit Southend – the latter best known for their dance floor mash-up of IOC chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch’s announcement that the host of the 2000 Olympics would be ‘Syd-er-ney’. 

This collision of alternate musical universes, guaranteed to offend both rock and dance purists alike, produced just one album, Installation, and its remarkable first single, Come On Spring. 
(Phil Kakulas, The Melbourne Review, August 2012).

Antenna
'All Rise feat. Matt Thomas'
Catalogue Number YEP017

Buy

Listen on Spotify

These previously unreleased remixes of ‘All Rise’ from Antenna’s Installation album are now digitally available through iTunes.

‘All Rise’ features The Mavis’s front man Matt Thomas who performed with the band at Melbourne Big Day Out 1999.

Album Track Listing

  1. All Rise feat. Matt Thomas (Radio Edit)
  2. All Rise feat. Matt Thomas (Antenna Remix)
Antenna
'Installation'
Catalogue Number YEP016

 Buy

Listen on Spotify


 

Founded on mutual respect and admiration, Antenna was a band with an unrivalled vision, a partnership that challenged the stereotypical oz rock dream and took you to sensory heaven and back.

Antenna comprised four unique talents. Justin Frew & Stu McCarthy from Sydney techno subversives Southend (‘The Winner Is…’), Kim Salmon from his Surrealists & The Scientists and Dave Faulkner of our dearly beloved Hoodoo Gurus, who joined their craft to make Antenna a musical tour de force that defies comparison. As well Antenna featured guest vocalists Chrissie Amphlett (The Divinyls) and Matt Thomas from The Mavis’s.

The album, Installation, an ambitious, eclectic pop gem originally released on Mushroom Records in 1998 is now available for the first time digitally through MGM Distribution.

“There’s been no other Aussie record like it.” (FHM)

Installation includes the single ‘Come On Spring’, a song of true seasonal splendor featuring a stunning vocal take by Kim Salmon which ignited firecrackers of praise and sent music directors lunging for their adds. It was THE radio tune of the season.

Watch Antenna performing live at Big Day Out Sydney 1999.
  • Album features Christina Amphlett (The Divinyls) & Matt Thomas (The Mavis’s)
  • First ever release on Mushroom International available digitally for the first time
  • Album of the week on Triple J
  • ‘Come On Spring’ was Number 64 on Triple J’s Hottest 100 of 1998
  • Toured Big Day Out 1999
  • Live performances: ABC TV’s  ‘Recovery’, Ch9’s ‘Hey, Hey It’s Saturday Night’
  • Performed at Mushroom Records 25th Anniversary Concert at the MCG

Album Track Listing

  1. Amazing Grace
  2. Come On Spring
  3. Tuner
  4. Divine
  5. Memories I Don’t Need
  6. Primitive Culture
  7. All Rise
  8. Is It Really Mine?
  9. Liza’s Tonic
  10. The Upside of Down
  11. 10-4

 

 

Antenna
'Come On Spring'
Catalogue Number YEP015

Buy   Buy

Listen on Spotify

Released in 1998, Come On Spring is the remarkable first single from Antenna’s Installation album - a lovechild of disparate musical styles that sounds as fresh and vital as the season it describes. 

(Phil Kakulas, The Melbourne Review, August 2012)

The song reached Number 64 on Triple J’s Hottest 100 for that year.

Watch Antenna performing ‘Come On Spring’ live on ABC TV’s ‘Recovery’ plus the orginal video below.

Album Track Listing

  1. Come On Spring
  2. Paris To Dacca
  3. Come On Spring (Come On Strings Remix)
  4. Come On Spring (UK Radio Edit)

 

 

Press
What the Media have to Say...

‘Installation’


“There’s been no other Aussie record like it.”
(FHM)


“Quite Brill.”
(Ross Clelland, The Drum Media)


“There’s so many different flavoured textures scattered throughout the record, it’s near impossible to describe the common glue which holds the whole project together. But, with something quintessentially Australian at its core, it works wonderfully.”
(Dino Scatena, The Daily Telegraph, 5 star review)


Installation is a dizzying cut ‘n’ paste of heady beats, breezy pop, rave-ready pieces and wicked dub.
(Jeff Apter, Rolling Stone)


“An awesome foursome - Antenna is made up of a bizarre assortment of musicians who created an album full of surprises. Take a pub rock icon, an indie groove god and a pair of diehard technoheads, and what do you get? One of the most unlikely musical hybrids the Australian music scene has produced. Their music – a unique juxtaposition of freakish techno tracks alongside hook-laden rock melodies surprised everyone. While the first single ‘Come On Spring’ is an engaging slice of rich melodic pop, another track ‘Paris To Dacca’ is like a walk through a Timezone arcade on Mars.”
(The Sunday Telegraph)


“What Antenna had over other “supergroups” is a stronger set of songs and a willingness to stretch just a little further. This combination of musicians won’t quite fit into the hole allocated for them.”
(Bernard Zuel, SMH)


“A brilliant Antenna proves more attractive than the Manics.”
(Drum Media BDO Sydney ’99 Review)

 

‘Come On Spring’

“Great this track is available digitally now.”
(Simon Wrinkler, Triple R Broadcasters)


Come On Spring is something of a lost gem. Released in 1998, it was the product of a short-lived collaboration between ex-Scientist/Beast of Bourbon/Surrealist Kim Salmon, chief Hoodoo Guru Dave Faulkner and Stuart McCarthy and Justin Frew of techno/house outfit Southend – the latter best known for their dance floor mash-up of IOC chairman Juan Antonio Samaranch’s announcement that the host of the 2000 Olympics would be ‘Syd-er-ney’. 

This collision of alternate musical universes, guaranteed to offend both rock and dance purists alike, produced just one album, Installation, and its remarkable first single, Come On Spring – a lovechild of disparate musical styles that sounds as fresh and vital as the season it describes. 

Rising from a winter’s sleep
Coming right up from the deep
Shallow pleasures beckon me
Here’s my new life set me free

Salmon’s opening two-note melody cuts across the understated guitar and lilting rhythm of the drum loop, his restrained vocal delivery becoming more insistent as we approach the chorus:

Come on spring, do your thing
What’s your story?
Come on spring, do your thing
You got something for me?

By now he is pleading with the elements, cajoling nature to oblige and bring forth the sort of renewal that love or sunshine or even a new band can deliver – a desire that anyone who’s endured a long, cold winter could attest too. 

Salmon says the song began life as a chord progression inspired by Serge Gainsbourg’s Bonnie and Clyde: “Something with shifting chords with a constant note giving a suspended feel.”McCarthy and Frew suggested pairing it with a drum loop they had been sitting on for a while. Against the odds the two parts fitted together perfectly. 

With Faulkner out of town, Salmon was left to his own devices. He played it to his girlfriend who remarked that it had ‘”the feeling you get at the end of winter when you’ve had enough and can’t wait for it to be spring.” That was enough to inspire him to write the verses but little more. He went to bed without a chorus. “The next morning when I woke up,” he says, “I went straight to the tape player, pressed the button and said to myself ‘Come on spring, do your thing’ and realised that I’d just unconsciously written the chorus.”

Despite not having been there for its inception, Dave Faulkner’s influence on the song is significant. His ‘Mamas and Papas’ style backing vocals provide one of the song’s strongest hooks and his elegant string arrangement serves as an important foil to McCarthy and Frew’s sequencers and samplers. Faulkner also brought a critical eye to the writing and recording overall. For Salmon, who was used to working more freely, it was a useful lesson.

“I learned a lot. It was probably more to do with details than the big picture, but the details do make up the big picture… I’ve always been one for broad brush strokes and not really putting much of a finish on things. That approach is appropriate for The Scientists and The Beasts of Bourbon of course but, there’s more to music than just being primal. And let’s face it, you can’t argue with all the hit records Dave’s had.”

It could be said that Antenna represented a ‘new life’ for its members, and in particular for Faulkner who had instigated its formation following the break-up of the Hoodoo Gurus after many years together. The band and the song made a splash, but without mainstream radio play and solid distribution the album was destined to fall between the cracks. By the next year their brave experiment was over. 

For those like me who cut our teeth on the Perth punk scene of the late 70s, Come On Spring was the answer to a question we had asked long ago, back when Kim Salmon and Dave Faulkner presided over the nascent scene like royalty, Salmon first with The Cheap Nasties and later The Scientists, Faulkner with his band The Victims. On more than one occasion I can remember travelling home from a gig with my friends pondering just how great a group boasting both of them might be.

(Phil Kakulas, The Melbourne Review, August 2012)

Phil Kakulas is a songwriter and musician who plays double bass in The Blackeyed Susans.

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