Picture Music - Picture Music

Picture Music
Picture Music
Left Ear Records
Australia, 1987/2022
2LP

One of the most cherished & unlikely low-key discoveries of this decade, Picture Music is a reissue of a tape recorded by a group of friends in Brisbane in the mid-‘80s, largely as a showreel in pursuit of film soundtrack work. Decades later, a local music collector rescued a box of tapes left on the curb for trash collection, leaving copies at a local shop where it caught the eye of Left Ear Records’ Chris Bonato.

Recorded late at night to escape the oppressive heat of the day, in a room lit by just a lamp and a candle, Picture Music is an appropriately dusky set of ambient, minimal ECM-style jazz, and nostalgic ‘80s vibes that would fit right in on the contemporary Music From Memory label. Like the discovery of a new room inside your house, it far exceeds its humble origins as would-be functional music.