QUT Digital Repository: http://eprints.qut.edu.au/ Knowles, Julian D. (2008) Liminal Electronic Musics: Post-Punk Experimentation in Australia in the 1970s-1980s . In Wilkie, Sonia and Hood, Anthony, Eds. Proceedings 'Sound : Space' Australasian Computer Music Conference, 2008, pages pp. 37-45, Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney. © Copyright 2008 Julian D. Knowles ACMC08 Sound:Space - Proceedings of the Australasian Computer Music Conference 2008 Julian Knowles Liminal Electronic Queensland University of Technology Kelvin Grove, QLD, 4059 Musics: Post-Punk Australia
[email protected] Experimentation in Australia in the 1970s- 1980s The rise and subsequent canonisation of serialism, Abstract musique concrète and elektronische musik through the 1950s and 60s fuelled the proliferation of electronic This paper presents a survey of some key experimental music studios in music institutions, radio stations electronic music scenes in Australia in the 1970s and and research institutes throughout Europe and the 1980s that were situated outside the frame of music USA. Such facilities became critical sites for musical institutions and the electro-acoustic music tradition. experimentation. Due to the somewhat conserv- Specifically it focuses on experimentalism in the popular ative institutional climate in Australia during this music field in this period, outlining the ‘little bands’ period, it took some time for comparable studios to scene in Melbourne and the scene around the Terse be established in institutions, a process which Tapes and M Squared labels in Sydney, It locates a set of commenced in the late 1960s. Whilst there is international reference points in No Wave, industrial evidence of some small private electronic music music and krautrock and discusses the work of some facilities outside music institutions, almost all were individuals who traversed the popular music and contained within institutions.