Last updated: 17 hours ago
Karen Marks’ 1981 single Cold Café has become one of Australia's most recognised minimal wave recordings. The Melbourne artist now showcases her brief but entire discography, all produced with experimental synthesist Ash Wednesday (The Metronomes, Modern Jazz).
A rarity in the then male dominated industry, Marks found her footing in music, first through rock journalism and then in band management. Synth-punks JAB (Johnny Crash, Ash Wednesday and Bodhan X) approached her for representation, subsequently contributing tracks to seminal 1978 snapshot Lethal Weapons and playing the Crystal Ballroom's opening night. Wednesday and Crash would soon dissolve JAB, enlisting Mark Ferry and Sean Kelly to create Models. Still under Mark's management, Models became one of the fastest rising new bands of the punk movement, playing to full houses of dedicated and frenzied fans everywhere. Sadly, internal frictions forced Wednesday and Marks to leave after two years.
Her creative relationship with Wednesday fortified with his 1980 machine-pop prank Love By Numbers, her swooning chorus uplifting his deadpan count, before the two collaborated on Marks’ own recording persona. Immortalised by the icy Oz wave of Cold Café, her Astor issued 7” also boasted the caffeinated flip Won't Wear It For Long.
Fans will also recognise You Bring These Things, a forlorn arrangement of an otherwise unreleased Paul Kelly song, gifted to her by the revered wordsmith.
A rarity in the then male dominated industry, Marks found her footing in music, first through rock journalism and then in band management. Synth-punks JAB (Johnny Crash, Ash Wednesday and Bodhan X) approached her for representation, subsequently contributing tracks to seminal 1978 snapshot Lethal Weapons and playing the Crystal Ballroom's opening night. Wednesday and Crash would soon dissolve JAB, enlisting Mark Ferry and Sean Kelly to create Models. Still under Mark's management, Models became one of the fastest rising new bands of the punk movement, playing to full houses of dedicated and frenzied fans everywhere. Sadly, internal frictions forced Wednesday and Marks to leave after two years.
Her creative relationship with Wednesday fortified with his 1980 machine-pop prank Love By Numbers, her swooning chorus uplifting his deadpan count, before the two collaborated on Marks’ own recording persona. Immortalised by the icy Oz wave of Cold Café, her Astor issued 7” also boasted the caffeinated flip Won't Wear It For Long.
Fans will also recognise You Bring These Things, a forlorn arrangement of an otherwise unreleased Paul Kelly song, gifted to her by the revered wordsmith.
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