As a music lover and record-collecting obsessive, I’m constantly amazed at what slips through the cracks of my musical radar. No surprises there, really. I am, after all, only one man with two ears and a finite amount of time that I can devote to the fine art of music appreciation. Anyways, there it was, delivered to my doorstep, no digging required. A Cloakroom Assembly’ (ACRA) Territory + Population. Mmmm, my rusty brain kicks into first gear; “I’m sure that I’ve heard of these guy’ beforeâ€. ACRA is Michael Tee, the “invisible face of mrrk’, and co-founder of Sydney’ M-Squared Records.
The M Squared label has been garnering increased amounts of exposure of late, as the Vinyl-on-Demand and Ascension labels have both delved into the early 80′ legacy of M Squared to release some beautiful box-set action. Despite living in Sydney for eight years, and being heavily into crate digging at a variety of second-hand dives, I never came across an M Squared release. The Makers of the Dead Travel Fast had manage to penetrate my radar, with their G’arage D’or retrospective LP on Xtreme, but that was about that. Those Euro-types have been going mad for M Squared for a while now, so like all good Aussie exports, maybe all that was needed was for some highly cultured foreigner to value add to the M Squared legacy and sell it back to us at exorbitant prices (check out Discogs, if your game).
So, back to the release at hand, and it’s a good un’; it’s been on constant rotation since receiving it, and that is fair-praise indeed, in these days of musical overabundance. A Cloakroom Assembly’ debut CD comes nearly thirty years after a couple of M Squared cassettes, and there is a palimpsest of this earlier era contained within Tom Salty, with its off-kilter, somewhat woozy cabaret music for airports.
Rewinding slightly, One Night on Stanwell Park Beach starts off affairs, setting the tone for the majority of the album; spooky keys, a sullen, sea-mist drenched atmosphere, a glowering presence lingering somewhere just out of reach. The liner notes are a touch more prosaic, shifting us gently out of gumshoe territory (+ Population), “Recorded by Michael Tee on Mac Powerbook late at night after the kids had gone to sleepâ€.
On Beltane Jzzzz, the cabaret moves out of the airport and relocates to a smoky, late night dive, or maybe it’s the local P & C club, what with the percussion reminding me of a table tennis tournament. The centrepiece of the album is Circa 1958, where the mrrk hangs heavily, kind of like what I would imagine Phil Niblock and Nurse With Wound getting together to cover Cluster 71 would sound like. Budding Frute keeps the Cluster connection going, but we move into the sun for a time, probably somewhere near Tamarama on a sunny Sunday morning.
Space Variation V and the album’ title track round out the sonic journey with a cheerful brand of isolationism, and this sums up Territory + Population quite succinctly. Imagine those brooding Northern Hemisphere dark-ambient types relocating to the brilliant white-balance reflections of a hazy February morning at Curl Curl beach and you might just be in the right sonic territory (+ population).
Oliver Laing
