ictv episode 7: ozTRONIKA

TOM ELLARD (SEVERED HEADS): The fundamental reason why we did electronic music was because there was an energy in here (points to his head) that wasn’t going to wait for me to learn how to play the guitar, okay. It was burning, we had to do it Now, it had to come out Now, and we didn’t want to learn the three chords. We knew nothing about anything, we were, I was 16, the other guys were about 17, we just started a band and we recorded and we put it on cassette and we did that unaware of what else that was going on, it was a need that had to be filled. Severed Heads started in ’79 and as we were doing it we became aware of what was going on in UK at the time which was Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, the Krautrock hangover so of thing, in Oz we had in Sydney SPK and that sort of noise sound, Melbourne was very vibrant, we had Whirlywirld and the Primitive Calculators, and as we evolved we found that we had a community.  And it was a community of people after the event that you could describe as do-it-yourself, but the thing was everything was a bit of a cottage industry… it was a time when if you tried to play live in a pub then the guy would not let you plug a drum machine through the PA, he’d say you’ll wreck my PA if you play that thing.

OLLIE OLSEN: I mean the St Kilda area is extremely different to what it was I guess in the punk new wave days … in those days there was a very defined sort of difference between it. In terms of like my direct peer group which was the North Fitzroy crew, the Primitive Calculators, and because we all lived next door to each other and stuff, we were basically slobs. I mean, we weren’t fashion conscious. We weren’t into groovy clothes or anything. It was a real sort of  quasi yobbo vibe we had going there, yobbo, you know, dada intellectuals or something bizarre like that, whereas the other side of the river was a lot more glam, they were all into wearing these funny clothes and all that sort of stuff. And there was a definite difference there between what was going on there in those two scenes, you yourself knew guys like Stuart Grant from the Primitive Calculators, I mean, you know, they were all guys from Springvale, suburban lads that were real smart, you know.

I actually think the Primitive Calculators, I actually think that they were one, for me, I think even now that they were one of the best bands this country has ever produced. No-one understood them. Probably about 15 people did and I was one of them. I was lucky enough to be good friends with them as well, they were absolutely amazing. They were so far beyond a lot of the other music that people know about from that era like on a lyrical level, musical level they were just so incredibly modern and ahead of their time.  I mean … people raved about my band at the time Whirlywirld but I think we were nothing compared to the Primitive Calculators.

PAUL MAC: I suppose when I was growing up I had lots of older brothers and sisters, so I always listened to sort of their more traditional rock’n’roll stuff. And then when I heard, like, Severed Heads and Kraftwerk and music like that, that, it just opened up a whole new sort of world for me. I mean, I was a keyboard player, I always played the piano. But it was like when I heard, you know, these people just making this crazy noise, which at first it just seemed revolutionary to me. So it was mainly Severed Heads, when I heard that it was like, that got me interested.

Well definitely SPK, I can remember them being a huge influence. And I mean, they’re a good example of the sort of going from the post punk thing to a kind of more dancey sensibility. I mean as everybody I think – even Severed Heads, they ended up getting their success once Robert Racic, you know, started remixing and producing their work. I mean initially it was like tape loops and farts in bathtubs, but later on it became more like, you know, like more straight up disco and that almost seemed like, Oh well, maybe this is the way that we’re going to sell records. And I think possibly that is why it kind of, for a lot of the Australians ended up, you know, becoming techno, rather than just electronic music.