a production

Background

Spaces is the first LP released by → ↑ →. It features a set of tracks composed as the soundtrack to a suite of art videos by Robert Randall & Frank Bendinelli.

Credits

Compositions, arrangement, piano, synthesizers & drums - Philip Brophy
Saxophones - Ralph Traviato
Guitars - Robert Goodge
Voices - Robert Randall, Jane Stevenson, Ralph Traviato, Maria Kozic & Philip Brophy
Studio engineering - David Chesworth

1981

SCREENS - premiere of video Spaces at Reconnaissance Art Gallery, Melbourne
Release of LP - Innocent Records

Overview

Robert Randall & Frank Bendinelli's Spaces video art suite is based on recreating in video a set of well-known Australian modernist paintings by artists like Grace Cossington Smith, John Brack and Fred Williams. In each case, Robert and Frank brought a wry tongue-in-cheek approach to utilizing the then-still-new medium of video. Their agenda was to 'translate' the paintings by importing and transposing them into the realm of chromo-key, RGB and studio lighting.

The brief given Philip for the required music was to match these 'video paintings' with background music which could play continually without any fixed beginning or end. Philip's tracks are generally minimalist in vein, with strong traces of all key → ↑ → preferences: Muzak, disco and electronics. Robert and Frank were keen to reflect the → ↑ → aesthetic world and its punk/new-wave stylistics. The 6th video "Expressive Space" recreates in hyper-graphic mode Philip and Maria's house at the time: chock-full of Maria's artworks, her toy collection, and Philip's massive record collection - all of which were filmed and chromo-keyed into the final video.

Technical

The Spaces suite of tracks were written, recorded and mixed over 6 graveyard sessions in late August 1981 at the Latrobe University Music Department recording studio.