Album Review: Ash Wednesday & Friends - Love And Other Numbers 1980-1984

You'd think you'd be hard pressed to find a link between Melbourne rockers Models and German industrial experimentalists Einsturzende Neubauten. The Models, of course, had that hit Out Of Mind, Out Of Sight in 1985, yet in their early incarnations they truly were alternative and quite experimental, operating in the same sphere as Nick Cave's Boys Next Door. The link is Ash Wednesday, who lasted a year with Models in the late-'70s and these days is part of the Einsturzende Neubauten touring outfit.

Prior to his move to Berlin in the '90s, Wednesday was extremely active on the Melbourne music scene, playing in synthetic shock rock outfit Jab, Models, and a few more bands, featured on this collection. Wednesday was extremely interested in early synths and many of the tunes presented here are examples of his attempts to grapple with their numerous possibilities. The opener, Love By Numbers, features Wednesday simply counting over the top of a catchy synthetic pop beat. It's hilarious and slightly absurd. Later his studio-only group The Metronomes feature a male and female alternatively reading out the contents of a shopping trolley above a funked-up drum machine on Sex II. That's part of the key to Wednesday's music: there's a dark swagger, yet it goes hand in hand with an absurdist sense of humour.

Theolonian Music brought out a desire to improvise with early electronic instruments, while Modern Jazz, a collective with a constantly evolving cast of musicians, was more directed at melding computer generated sound with human spontaneity.

This reissue charts an extremely fertile period in Wednesday's artistic development. It's universally sparse and austere, with an experimental approach to synthesiser, a punk rock spirit and an abundance of humour.