In 1981 a teenage Martin Kennedy stumbled upon Steve Kilbey and The Church at a strange hybrid hippie/new wave festival in Australia and fell in love with their look and sound. He recorded their set on a walkman, and the songs helped spark the beginning of his music career. Just a year before, an equally fresh-faced Steve Kilbey formed The Church in Sydney, the very beginning of their public life as accidental hit makers.
Twenty-nine years later Martin and Steve find themselves working together on Unseen Music Unheard words, without any fanfare and virtually no prior planning. It was simple: Martin wrote the music and Steve wrote the words. No argument, no egos, just a matter of pressing the record button. The results are an effective balancing of Kennedy’s haunting and melodic tunes with Kilbey's witty and intelligent lyrics, melded together by his heavenly voice. Martin kept his teenage love of The Church out of the equation in fear of it skewing his songwriting but look out for a wink to the Church’s “You Took” in “Thought of Leaving.”
“Steve's voice complements the ambient sounds so well; he wraps his velvety smooth lungs around the words like a boa constrictor going in for the kill, and you’re hypnotized by his voice so much that you wouldn't even realize that the life is being squeezed out of you. Stretch into the Stars is exactly that a beautiful piece of space rock that wouldn't sound out of place on any kraut rock album from the 70’s.” – thedwarf.com.au
“If you were aware of the best work by The Church; this will certainly ring a bell. Kilbey’s silky evocative voice seductively narrates his suitably dreamy lyrics over Kennedy’s cooly opiated atmospheric song structures, recalling nothing so much as The Church at their most stately, subdued and grand.” - Dream Magazine #10
“Occasionally side projects can be something really spectacular. This isn't an album where you pick favorite songs - you simply immerse yourself in the whole lush experience. The good news is they're recording a follow up” – Reverb magazine 4.5/5
Steve Kilbey Steve Kilbey's band and The Church formed in Sydney, Australia, in 1980. Their public life as accidental hit makers is on the record: Under the Milky Way galvanized the world 20 years ago, and again in 2001 when it opened the smash cult film, Donnie Darko. Various hits collections attest to a distant era of similarly strange and subversive pop chart victories: The Unguarded Moment, Almost With You, When You Were Mine, It's No Reason, Reptile, Tantalised, Metropolis… all continue to appear, sporadically and often transformed, in the live shows that remain their life blood.
Martin Kennedy Martin Kennedy has been involved in music since the 1980’s, beginning with indie rockers Pray TV who achieved five seconds of fame when they signed to US label Radioactive (Live, The Ramones) in the signing frenzy that followed Nirvana and grunge explosion of the early 1990’s. Choosing a completely different musical direction, Martin’s next band All India Radio has been turning out spine-tingling slow-core instrumental tracks since 1999. The band was nominated for an Australian ARIA award in 2003 and has contributed music to One Tree Hill, Michael Moore's Sicko, Australia's Bondi Rescue, The Recruits, Till Human Voices Wake Us, along with advertising campaigns for BMW, Telstra and USA animal rights organization PETA.
