Concrete Playground

The last time I chatted to Darren Sylvester about his work, he said that the American sibling pop duo The Carpenters embodied the main sort of parable he aimed towards. Their obsessive ongoing refining and remastering of old songs to achieve the cleanest perfection possible, he said, was something he aspired to with his own practice.

Certainly in the Melbourne artist’s photographic body of work, for which he is best known, there is an instantly recognisable highly polished and orchestrated artifice that runs parallel to this formulaic aesthetic of pop he so reveres; and so it made predictable sense that his debut album was a self-professed ode to The Carpenters and his other pure pop idols (like New Order and Phil Spector). Less predictable though was how good the songs actually were in their own right. Somehow both comforting and unsettling in their glossy depthlessness, they provide a perfect synth-heavy soundtrack to the rigidly controlled, self-contained worlds of his images.

Entirely written, recorded and produced by Sylvester, the self-titled album was originally created on vinyl to be played non-stop for the duration of an exhibition at Queensland’s GoMA where the artist rebuilt The Carpenters’ original Japanese style backyard garden. Having since been picked up and released by Unstable Ape and Remote Control Records, it is being launched in Sydney twice this week; so you can pay double tribute to the deeply superficial sounds of this new-new-wave pop.

Thursday Feb 11: GOODGOD SMALL CLUB (with Scott & Charlenes Wedding + Dominic Talarico), 55 Liverpool Street, CBD, $10 on the door, 8pm. Saturday Feb 13: THE COMMONS (with Jessica Says), 32 Burton Street, Darlinghurst, $50 with dinner/dessert or $25 performance only, strictly limited to 25 people, email rob@thecommons.com.au to register interest.