Not Drowning Waving

Not Drowning Waving started out as one of the most innovative Australian groups of the 80's, spawning the very individual music adventures of one of its founders, David Bridie.

Melbourne's Not Drowning, Waving began in 1983 as the musical partnership of classically trained keyboard player Bridie and guitarist John Phillips. The pair met when David was working on a song called 'Moving Around' and invited John to experiment on it with him prior to recording the results at LaTrobe University's music department studio with a borrowed 808 drum machine and bass player Rowan McKinnon. Just before working on 'Moving Around' Bridie had auditioned for Rowan's group, Go Circus. The completed 'Moving Around' was an epic seven and a half minutes long.

David and John spent the rest of the session recording a series of atmospheric instrumentals. Some other friends came in to add extra touches. Many of these instrumentals were never released, but they sparked the duo's enthusiasm for the sort of free form ambient soundscapes that would become the basis of their sound as Not Drowning Waving, and lay the seeds for their interest in film music. The name was a variation on Stephen Smith's poem 'Drowning Not Waving'.

'Moving Around' was released in April 1984 on the just set-up indie label Rampant Records with two of the instrumentals, 'Untouched', and 'Happy As Can Be' on the B side. For the album sessions which followed, the recording studio Rampant records supplied turned out to be the label owner's spare room and kitchen, fitted with his 8 track recorder. Sometimes waiting for the neighbour's dog to stop barking, Bridie and Phillips and friends recorded 'Another Pond', moving to a more professional environment for the mixdown - John Phillips' lounge room. The results saw them compared to experimental/ambient pioneers Brian Eno and Durutti Column.

During the sessions for 'Another Pond' Bridie and Phillips had joined friends Rowan McKinnon, Russell Bradley and Tim Cole's group Easter. As time went on Rowan, Russell and Tim became more involved in Not Drowning Waving, and for two years the two bands co-existed with almost the same line-up, Easter doing the Melbourne live circuit, and Not Drowning Waving being a recording only outfit. Along the way both bands were joined by percussionist James Southall, who'd played with an earlier Bridie group, Misspent Youth. Once Not Drowning Waving finally embarked on their first live appearances, Easter began to slowly wind down and finally disappeared, having released just one single. NDW performances were noted for their emphasis on light projections rather than spotlights on band members.

For Not Drowning Waving's second album, 'The Little Desert', an expanded band found a large old empty church hall in Elsternwick and brought the recording equipment into the hall for a series of days and late nights of live recordings. Singer Tim Cole also acted as producer and engineer.

By this time John Phillips and David Bridie had begun their film music scoring careers, when they were contacted by film-maker Mark Worth, who was making a documentary film, 'Canoe Man', about canoe makers from Manus Island off the Papua New Guinea coast. They began looking into Papua New Guinea music and culture for the project, and this inevitably spilled over onto the music of Not Drowning Waving. The band's next release was the six-track EP 'Sing Sing' (pidgin for "song" or "performing music"). The EP was recorded in a "proper" studio, set in bushland on the side of a hill on the outskirts of Melbourne.

The taste for unusual recording sessions continued however. The band recorded its next album, 1987's 'Cold And The Crackle' in the Great Hall at Monsalvat, an artist's village built by its founders on the outskirts of Melbourne in the 1930s. By now Not Drowning Waving had expanded into an eleven piece ensemble, but for 'Claim', their first album for a new indie label, and a shift to more orthodox song structures, the band had basically returned to the "core" lineup, with one exception. Penny Hewson, of the band Sea Stories featured on 'Claim', and became part of the new Not Drowning Waving touring party, playing anything the other members couldn't.

After the 'Claim' tour David Bridie and James Southall set off on holiday to Papua New Guinea, made contact with various artists and musicians there, and laid plans to record the next NDW album in PNG. Local superstar George Telek co-wrote and sang on a couple of the tracks on 'Tavaran', which became Not Drowning Waving's first mainstream label international release, through Warners. A tour featuring a handful of PNG artists, augmenting NDW's lineup to ten again, visited both countries. In 1990 classically trained cellist Helen Mountford had joined the core band.

Following the PNG tour Bridie, Mountford and Bradley formed the string oriented offshoot My Friend The Chocolate Cake, while NDW concentrated on providing the soundtracks for 'Proof', 'Hammers Over Anvil' and Richard Lowenstein's 'Say a Little Prayer'.

1992's 'Circus' album was a complete departure for Not Drowning Waving in every way. Tim Cole had left, so for the first time the group entertained the idea of enlisting an outside producer - Hugh Jones, noted for his work with Simple Minds, Echo and The Bunnymen and others. Hugh suggested a studio in the Welsh countryside. The album NDW made in their months there turned out to be the last. After touring the album for a year the band decided to fold. They couldn't agree on the next step.

Bridie and Mountford concentrated on their My Friend The Chololate Cake project. Bridie also continued his work on film soundtracks, and won an award for his music for 'In A Savage Land'. In mid-2000 David released his first solo album, 'Act Of Free Choice', on three tracks again collaborating with John Phillips, who now lives in Europe.

On February 28, 2003 Not Drowning Waving played their first live concert together in 10 years in aid of a book and CD dedicated to West Papua and financed by David Bridie.