ASH WEDNESDAY - Love And Other Numbers 1980-1984 LP

Highly recommended.

Melbourne-via-Adelaide musician Ash Wednesday's life in sound dates way back to 1977 in Adelaide when he was playing with the proto-punk rockers, JAB, known for their contribution to the Suicide Records comp', Lethal Weapons. They relocated to Melbourne, soon split up and then Ash went onto form The Models with Sean Kelly and others.

Along with The Boys Next Door (with whom they released a split 7"), The Models were the darlings of the inner-city post-punk scene, and would later become a chart-topping pop band.

But this was only the beginning of Ash's musical journey. This compilation puts together the best tracks from Ash's solo and collaborative releases from the extremely fertile sonic period of the early '80s. It has some rare solo tracks, his collaboration with minimal-synth songstress, Karen Marks (a demo version of her classic single, "Cold Cafe"), as well as multiple tracks from his coldwave synth-pop acts, Modern Jazz and The Metronomes.

Somewhere in the sonic nexus of very early Human League, Suicide and Cabaret Voltaire lies this musical universe Ash Wednesday inhabited, though his take on this new synthetic music was uniquely Australian. It was avant-garde, yet it strived for accessibility.

For the first time on vinyl, a collection of the best musical contributions from this unique figure in Australian post-punk is put together for your listening pleasure.