[This interview was originally broadcast live via Radio Fodder on 27/06/24. The complete and unabridged interview can be listened to on YouTube.]

Coming off their latest performance at Collingwood’s lovely Hope St Radio (which we wrote about for the magazine), David Chesworth and Robert Goodge, founding members of the legendary Melbourne band Essendon Airport, are in good spirits. “We found it great,” Goodge says, “it was the first time we’d played as a five piece with our original drummer Paul [Fletcher]. We’re finding ways to use our old material from that period, like, most of those tunes were from 1979.” Chesworth chimes in, “We don’t have any strategies necessarily as to what we’re going to play, but I suppose that [material] was the most playable with the group.”

Said material is 1980’s minimalistic Sonic Investigations of the Trivial EP, the first batch of songs released under the Essendon Airport name. Hearing Chesworth and Goodge eagerly walk through each facet of their group is like plugging into an ongoing conversation. It feels wrong to interject; they’re firing on all cylinders recalling anecdote after anecdote. The duo began recording together in 1978 after meeting at the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre, where they were both heavily involved in its small music scene (an extensive archive of its performances exists online). Everything about their like-minded musical concorde was rooted in spontaneity. “Our first gig was for the Sonic Investigations material we wrote for a performance at Clifton Hill and I think we were called ‘Blue Green’ or something. We didn’t have a name,” Goodge says. “Philip Brophy from the group → ↑ → (Tsk Tsk Tsk) cynically asked, ‘Why don’t you call yourselves Essendon Airport?’ And we thought, ‘That’s the worst name we’ve ever heard… Okay, we’ll do it.’” Their desire to work off the cuff stuck with them.

The band’s sound is a conscious subversion of the styles surrounding Chesworth and Goodge. They cite the radio and music in their parents’ cars as influences, but more so the punk movement and distinct music scenes of the ‘70s, such as deep jazz and minimal music from the United States, namely New York’s no wave scene. However, their music never neatly fit those constraints—it’s a hodgepodge of influences. “We wanted to use different things from popular culture and put them through the blender of simple repetition of structures,” Goodge says. The resultant music on Sonic Investigations was indeed repetitive and straightforward, but entrancing—electric guitar and piano, a single foot pedal, a flat phaser and reel-to-reel drum machine was all they had at their arsenal—and it’s effective, centring ambient music.

How, then, did they ease into the experimental post-punk they’re best known for? More spontaneous lineup changes, of course. “[Fletcher] came back one day with a drum kit he bought from the op-shop across the road,” Chesworth recalls. “He had no idea he could drum and nodded away, and he sat down and just started hitting every conceivable sort of pattern.” Fletcher’s sporadic percussion became a staple in the band’s chemistry. The addition of saxophonist Ian Cox, who they met at 3CR, also influenced the sonic shift. “He had a beautiful, melodic sensibility. But then he had this sort of Ornette Coleman [inspired], absolutely incredible improvisatory sort of style. He would come in with this eruption of sound over this thing that we’ve built up,” says Chesworth.

Their combined prowess was captured on 1982’s Palimpsest, their sole studio album and a curious collection of all things art punk, post-punk, avant-garde funk, circus jazz and new wave. A delectable platter of colourful genres. Chesworth had access to La Trobe University’s recording studio and recorded it fairly quickly, given they were already touring the material live. The final overdubs were Chesworth's vocals. Something like this coming out of Melbourne seemed peculiar then and still does now—again, that was a deliberate choice. Goodge says their original intention was to play their music in all sorts of spaces, like art galleries, pubs and rock venues. He mentions that they opened for Midnight Oil at the Crystal Ballroom with their minimalistic songs. What was the audience’s response? “People thought we were on a different planet!” They play for themselves.

Palimpsest is an apt title. It refers to layering text by erasing one layer and writing the other set on top, which succinctly summarises their music. “Our music might sound original, but probably very little of it is original, it’s all like gleaned from listening to pop and experimental music,” Chesworth says. The song titles are borrowed from popular music of the ‘50s and ‘60s, such as ‘Begin the Beguine’ and ‘I Feel a Song Coming On’. The structure of ‘How Low Can You Go?’ is based on the ‘60s TV show Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. They’re reinventions of popular culture. The cover artwork itself is a palimpsest—Fletcher was doing a degree at the Phillip Institute of Technology and had the tools to silk screen the cover. In a way, each piece of this body of work acts as a mantra: “Where the originality comes from is putting all these little phrases and things through the grinder of repetition techniques,” Goodge says.

With the renewed interest in the group, particularly post–pandemic, what’s next? September 2022 saw the release of their first new music in 40 years: The 7” vinyl ‘Agua Por Favor’ and ‘Ten Thousand Steps’ featuring vocalist Anne Cessna, released on Chapter Music. More material is set to arrive digitally on the label, recorded as a four-piece with Barbara Hogarth and Graham Lee, both of whom joined the two in the five-piece lineup. They also confirmed a Palimpsest vinyl reissue arriving next year, which will certainly be more affordable than the only copy for sale on Discogs for $450. The two seem keen to commemorate the occasion. “We might pull together the more robust version of Essendon Airport for a big special concert,” Chesworth says. Aside from that, their next gig is at Russian House, organised by Cease and Desist and Totalno Zeleno, on Sunday 11 August.

Why is it that Essendon Airport still sounds fresh today, as retro as their music may sound? It’s because they had room to experiment, mirroring the ethos of today’s many persevering independent artists. The duo suggests that was valuable. “We were pretty imperfect,” Chesworth says. “There’s a looseness and kind of crudity to some of the recordings because I just figured it out. And then that became an aesthetic a bit later after we [disbanded], this sort of trying your best but with imperfectness kind of thing.” Essendon Airport’s inability to be tied down to a single genre has forever been at their advantage. Chesworth adds, “Back then, the music scene was very commercial. And if it wasn’t, then it was doing jazz or classical. There weren’t all these little subsets that there are now with their sort of following—it was very much mainstream.”

Essendon Airport always followed their own flightpath and all these years later, they continue to do so. “We were just trying to find another way not to sound like [the mainstream],” Chesworth says. “We were saturated with this stuff and just had to find a little spot that would work for us.” That is the spirit of fervent artistry.

Essendon Airport will play their next gig at Fitzroy’s Russian House on Sunday 11 August. You can keep up to date with all things Essendon Airport over on their Instagram.