In September 2022, the group released their first new music in 40 years, with the double-A 7" single "Agua Por Favor"/"Ten Thousand Steps", featuring vocalist Anne Cessna.
[1] Formed in Melbourne, Essendon Airport began as an instrumental electronic music duo in 1978 by Robert Goodge on lead guitar and David Chesworth on Wurlitzer electric piano and a home made drum machine,[2] bought via the Trading Post.
[2] The duo described the EP's tracks, "songs which combine many of the most facile and insipid kinds of music in a redeemingly dignified manner... creating new trivia out of old.
All this takes place along with a kind of pedantic fetishism for small-repetition games - the music travels in circles, spirals and solid blocks of sameness and difference."
"[5] This manifestation of Essendon Airport is less well known than the later ones but played memorable performances around Melbourne including the Clifton Hill Community Music Centre and supports at the Crystal Ballroom in front of bemused audience members waiting for bands like Midnight Oil or Jimmy and the Boys.
[4] Embellished with Fletcher's arrhythmic drumming and Ian Cox' sweet, brittle saxophone, the four-piece provided a range of styles from extreme minimalism to plundering the hidden resonances in the popular song.
Adding bass player Barabara Hogarth (from Government Drums with Willy Zygier and Richard Pleasance), the group developed material with a funk feel and performed head-lining shows at the Jump Club, and Crystal Ballroom, and toured to Sydney.
[2] Goodge, Cox and Hogarth formed the nucleus of the successful pop-funk band, I'm Talking in late 1983, which included Kate Ceberano as lead vocalist.
In September 2022, the group released the double-A 7" single "Agua Por Favor"/"Ten Thousand Steps", featuring vocalist Anne Cessna, and artwork by Paul Fletcher.