Ollie Olsen & Australia

[Guest r2d2]

I found this quite interesting read about Ollie Olsen and Australian scene. I knew he was an important figure down under but I had no idea he was actually one of the pioneers and his musical roots date waaay back.

 

Here it is:

 

"Norwegian-born, Melbourne-bred musician Ian `Ollie' Olsen is recognised as one of the key figures in the Australian post-punk electronic movement of the late 1970s. Ever the experimentalist, Olsen's eclectic career in avant rock has taken him from The Reals, one of the original Melbourne punk combos of the late 1970s, through to the acid-house/techno/trance outfit Third Eye. He was also the driving force behind the innovative Psy-Harmonics label. The Reals comprised Olsen (guitar), Gary Gray (vocals), Chris Walsh (bass) and Peter Cave (drums). The band played the odd gig around Melbourne, and alongside The Boys Next Door, Babeez/News, ÄìÄ and The Obsessions were the only punk bands in town. At the end of 1977, Olsen left The Reals, and Gray, Walsh and Cave recruited Mick Holmes (guitar) to form The Negatives. Meanwhile, Olsen assembled the now legendary Young Charlatans which comprised Rowland S. Howard (guitar; ex-Obsessions), Jeffrey Wegener (drums; ex-Saints) and Janine Hall (bass). As Clinton Walker pointed out, Young Charlatans had inner-city `supergroup' status from the outset and helped pioneer post-punk rock in Australia. Young Charlatans' existence was brief but intense. They played a total of 13 gigs and earned a considerable reputation on the inner-city scene in the process. Olsen left and rejoined a number of times and by May 1978 the band had fallen apart. Young Charlatans did not record anything comprehensive, although a version of the Rowland S. Howard song `Shivers' (later made famous by The Boys Next Door) appeared on the cassette-zine Fast Foward (#4). Howard went on to join The Boys Next Door/Birthday Party, Wegener played with The Last Words before joining Ed Kuepper's new band Laughing Clowns in April 1979, and Hall later turned up in The Saints and Weddings, Parties, Anything. Olsen had moved on again, forming the equally legendary Whirlywirld. Whirlywirld grew out of Olsen's dissatisfaction with conventional guitar-based rock, and his desire to transcend its limitations. Like Suicide in New York and Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire in the UK, Whirlywirld was a pioneer in the field of post-punk synthesiser electronics. Whirlywirld was not the first electronic band in Australia (Cybotron has that distinction), but it was the first to apply the form to the punk ethos. The original Whirlywirld line-up (August 1978) comprised Olsen (vocals, electronics, sax), John Murphy (drums, electronics; ex-News), Dean Richards (guitar), Andrew Duffield (electronics) and Simon Smith (electronics). Olsen refused to play live, but Whirlywirld did issue the three-track maxi-single Whirlywirld (`Window to the World', `Moto'/`Signals') on the Missing Link label in April 1979. The record's startling, hard-edged electronic sound was embellished by Richard's `electrical' guitar work and with Murphy bashing away on a variety of percussive devices, electronic and otherwise. By January 1979 Philip Jackson had replaced Duffield (who later joined Models) and the band commenced playing gigs. By mid-1979, Richards, Smith and Jackson had left (Richards went on to front cult combos Equal Local and Hot Half Hour). Greg Sun (bass) and Arnie Hanna (guitar) joined and the band issued the four-track 12-inch EP Whirlywirld (the first 500 copies of which contained a bonus 7-inch single `Sextronics'/`Eyebrows Still Shaved'). By the end of 1979, after having played only 14 gigs, Whirlywirld had run its course. Olsen and Murphy left Australia in early 1980 bound for the UK. In London, Olsen and Murphy formed The Beast Apparel, played a few gigs and eventually issued a single, `Grand Life for Fools and Idiots'/ `Beat Up the Old Shack' (on the Prince Melon label, 1982), which came out under the name Hugo Klang. The band recorded a second single, `The Wheel of Fat'/`Mouse Runner' in Berlin. The Au-go-go label issued the single in Australia, by which time Olsen had split Hugo Klang. Olsen and Murphy returned to Australia in 1984 (after Murphy had played with a number of UK outfits like The Associates and Shriekback). They formed avant-garde outfit Orchestra of Skin and Bone and issued a self-titled album on the Major label in 1985. The line-up on the album included Olsen (vocals, guitar), Murphy (drums), Arnie Hanna (guitar), Marie Hoy (keyboards; ex-Thrust and the Cunts), David Hoy (cello), Tom Hoy (sax), Lochie Kirkwood (vocals, sax), James Rogers (trumpet), Peter Scully (guitar) and Dugald McKenzie (vocals, harmonica). Orchestra of Skin and Bone proved incomprehensible to local audiences and rarely played live. By 1986, Olsen was working as musical director on Richard Lowen-stein's feature film Dogs in Space, which was set in the Melbourne post-punk wasteland of the late 1970s. Murphy went on to form The Slub and Stress of Terror, and to play in bands as disparate as The Wreckery, Box the Jesuit and Dumb and the Ugly. "

[Guest unikos]

doesnt this read say anything about his later projects ? (which are more interesting as they are trance-like)

just have to say that ollie olsen is superb and i love his style although sometimes i get a headache when listening to his music at full blast : D

[Guest hoffy]

Ollies great, but his LP emptiness is a bit stark and wwaaayyyy too similar to Aphex Twin's "Selected Ambient Works"

[Guest r2d2]

Oh another thing... I just read that he was also mixing for INXS.