Gondwanaland - Terra Incognita

Many thanks to Scot for sending me this brilliant
album from one of Australia's truly great bands.
I saw them play at least once at a Maleny folk
festival, you would be hard pressed to find a
better band to see under the stars and up
in the mountains.

On a break from bore drilling in 1983 Charlie McMahon
recorded with synthesizer player Peter Carolan the
Gondwanaland Project instrumental album Terra Incognita,
which prefigured world music by almost a decade.
This ground breaking debut showed the didjeridu could be
a key component in contemporary music,
setting the mood & driving the rhythm.
Documentary film makers embraced the album for its
distinctly Australian ambience.
Midnight Oil drummer Rob Hirst called this ‘a seminal album’.
It was the first time didj was played with regular rhythms,
making it a base for contemporary song arrangements.
The experiment worked so well that Charlie & Peter dropped the
“Project” tag and engaged percussionist Ed Duquemin
to launch Gondwanaland as a touring & recording act.
As well as regular pub & club shows Gondwanaland played
epic outback tours and the live energy induced the up
tempo style more evident in their next 4 albums.
Gondwanaland hold the record for Australia’s largest
live performance with their SOUND CLOUD
performance to 120,000 at Sydney Cove in 1988.

Track List
01 Emu
02 South Road
03 Eye In The Sky
04 Danger
05 Empty Sky
06 Landscape
07 Drought
08 Anthem
09 Morning
10 Pulse
11 Eagle

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Charlie McMahon with Midnight Oil.

Ambience - Various artists

This 1987 release was a project of the ambience radio show on JJJ, which
was on sunday nights. I never heard the show but liked the look of this
compilation which quickly became one of my favorites.
When the program was conceived in late 84 such music by Australian artists
was rare, a situation changed in part by artists on this Cd.
There are the artists that you'll be familiar with, such as Not Drowning Waving,
Steve Kilbey, Chris Abrahams and the wonderful Gondwanaland.
I plan to cover all these artists, however this really special Cd will serve as an
introduction.
If your wondering what this is like its very beautiful instrumental music, its
also very intelligent and very relaxing, I remember many years ago camped
at the Lamington national park camp site, playing this round sunset and
people coming up and asking what it was, being quite blowen away by this
music.
If anyone knows more about the artists, or the radio program please tell us
via the comments.

Track list
01 - Movement One (Beginnings) - Andrew Wilson.
02 - Ephemeral Lakes - Gondwanaland
03 - Orpheus - The Umbrellas
04 - Water drops - Not Drowning, Waving
05 - The Cheshire Cat - Not Drowning, Waving
06 - Bin Dancing - John Elder
07 - Twirly- Bird - Michael Atherton
08 - CFD - Chris Abrahams
09 - A sad Little Piano Piece - Steve Kilbey
10 - Napoleon's Army, Christmas Eve, Outside Moscow - Steve Kilbey

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