(The following is an extract from an unfinished biography of little-known Australian electronic musician 'Bronzewing' (born Logan Horn; 21st April 1959) written by Nick Moody in 2001. Although they never met, Bronzewing worked closely with Ookean's longtime collaborator James Bell and shared with Ookean a desire to depict the Australian natural landscape with music.)
Australia has always been a land of contradictions but never more so than in the 1980s. We were insecure about our place in the world even as we exported our culture – a version of it, anyway – on a bigger scale than ever before. We, as a nation, were realising the enormous value of our natural heritage and of our culture, both European and indigenous. It seems only fitting then, that the musical voices that defined this era were often a contradictory mix of the natural and the synthesised. And although he was never a well-known artist, no one typified this more than a Melbourne-based electronic musician known as Bronzewing.
Bronzewing’s sound was as organic as the Australian bush, even though it was predominantly made on electronic instruments. It had a sweeping, expansive quality that immediately evoked the outback and yet the composer had rarely ever set foot outside of the greater Melbourne area due to, in his words, an ‘intense allergic reaction to sand’.
The music was sylvan yet urban. European in origin, yet embracing of the unique Australian landscape and ancient culture. Over the course of a handful of self-produced records Bronzewing created a sound which in many ways was definitive of the Australian experience in the late twentieth century.
Bronzewing was born in 1959 in the Melbourne suburb of Eltham. His parents were both active in the arts; his mother was a moderately well-known sound installation artist, his father a passable painter*; and he grew up amongst the bohemians of sixties and seventies Melbourne.
Questioned by an interviewer about his ‘real name’, Bronzewing replied, “This is my real name, my true name, bestowed upon me by the Wurundjeri elders. The land itself named me and schooled me in its knowledge and history.” Official records however, indicate that Bronzewing’s real name was actually Logan Horn and that he was schooled at Scotch College in Hawthorn.
He regularly claimed to be ‘1/18th Indigenous’ on his mother’s side, and a direct descendent of Simon Wonga – a respected elder of the Wurundjeri clan who was present during the first white settlement of Melbourne. The Wonga is a type of native Australian pigeon and this was the inspiration for Logan’s own pseudonym, derived from the Common Bronzewing Pigeon (Phaps chalcoptera)**.
Bronzewing was accepted to the University of Melbourne in 1977 to formally study music but dropped out after less than a year. He was highly critical of his time at university, saying; “I am glad that I was able to have that experience, brief though it was. To see that totalitarian, musical sweatshop from the inside, but still escape with my spirit intact. There’s nothing that those Eurocentric fascists could possibly teach me that I couldn’t learn from listening to the rhythms of the Australian continent and the lessons of our indigenous elders. Plus, with the latter, I get to sleep in.”
Done with formal education and fed up with the city, Bronzewing moved to Healesville, a rustic town surrounded by bush, just north of Melbourne. He rented a crumbling Victorian-era house nearby Badger Creek and cobbled together a home studio in the lounge room. Although his time at university had been difficult, he had forged a rewarding friendship with one of his lecturers, ‘Savage’ James Bell. Bell was a respected studio guitarist who was mainly known for his work on the recordings of eccentric soundtrack composer Felix Ookean. Bell started working as a full-time session player in his early twenties and he sympathised with Bronzewing’s naivety and inexperience in the studio. He provided the budding composer with some basic recording gear and unused synthesisers obtained from the university.
One of Bronzewing’s early home recordings, Menura’s Rainforest was released as a private press 7” record in 1981 and distributed amongst friends and family of the artist. It was well-liked by the Melbourne alternative music scenesters and became something of a minor hit on community radio. Despite repeatedly and stridently opining that, “success is the swiftest route to mediocre art,” Bronzewing quietly reveled in his newfound popularity and it energised him to create more music. (He later clarified that this corollary only applied when the success befell other musicians.)
Notwithstanding this taste of mainstream acceptance, he remained fiercely independent and suspicious of authority, flatly rejecting any suggestions of record contracts or even influences from popular music. Bronzewing imagined a purity to his music that would only be sullied by elements from outside of his bushland microcosm. He insisted that “any interference from the ‘official’ music industry would be a dilution and a poison to [his] art. Can a platypus live in a creek that has been polluted by industry? I think not.”
Due to this modest success, in late 1982 Bronzewing was offered a spot on the staff of the ABC Natural History unit as a documentary soundtrack composer. For many musicians this would be a dream job, but the imposition of a work routine was too much for Bronzewing’s free spirit and he withdrew from the unit, and then the Australian mainland, without telling his employers. In fact, the ABC only became aware of his disappearance due to a news report on the blockade of the proposed Franklin River dam, where Bronzewing could clearly be seen on the front-line of the protest waving a placard that read, 'WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CRAYFISH?' The musician was arrested by Tasmanian police shortly after the broadcast, and once released, was too embarrassed to return to the ABC.
All of Bronzewing’s albums from the eighties and early nineties were recorded with the team of producer ‘Savage’ James Bell & multi-instrumentalist Sebastian Barbat. Barbat was an accomplished world musician who was well-versed in Middle Eastern instrumentation. Although he is credited with playing various ethnic stringed instruments and additional keyboard parts on these LPs, Bronzewing’s explicit and recurring instructions at the mixing desk were to increase the volume for his own parts at the expense of all others and Barbat’s playing on them is essentially inaudible.
When asked if the use of electronics was at odds in depicting the natural world, he famously scoffed, “There are rays living in the Tasman Sea that can generate 200 volts of electricity. There are insect larvae in Victorian caves that can emit powerful beams of light. I suppose you would ask them if what they are doing is at odds with nature.”
* Cornelius Henry Horn – Bronzewing’s father – was embroiled in controversy in 1997 when it was found that he was responsible for countless forgeries of 19th century artworks from the Heidelberg School. He was initially going to be charged with a criminal offence until art historians testified that ‘no reasonable person’ would have assumed the pieces were genuine, saying, “even the most casual glimpse should have indicated these were not authentic [...] In many cases the artist has added anachronistic flourishes in the background such as power lines and digital clocks and in one painting, although he has attempted to obscure it after the fact, the artist has obviously signed his own name.”
** Older members of the Wurundjeri clan told me that within Melbourne’s indigenous community, Bronzewing was only ever “begrudgingly tolerated – like a stray dog who hangs around so long, you've got to take him in,”
Australia has always been a land of contradictions but never more so than in the 1980s. We were insecure about our place in the world even as we exported our culture – a version of it, anyway – on a bigger scale than ever before. We, as a nation, were realising the enormous value of our natural heritage and of our culture, both European and indigenous. It seems only fitting then, that the musical voices that defined this era were often a contradictory mix of the natural and the synthesised. And although he was never a well-known artist, no one typified this more than a Melbourne-based electronic musician known as Bronzewing.
Bronzewing’s sound was as organic as the Australian bush, even though it was predominantly made on electronic instruments. It had a sweeping, expansive quality that immediately evoked the outback and yet the composer had rarely ever set foot outside of the greater Melbourne area due to, in his words, an ‘intense allergic reaction to sand’.
The music was sylvan yet urban. European in origin, yet embracing of the unique Australian landscape and ancient culture. Over the course of a handful of self-produced records Bronzewing created a sound which in many ways was definitive of the Australian experience in the late twentieth century.
Bronzewing was born in 1959 in the Melbourne suburb of Eltham. His parents were both active in the arts; his mother was a moderately well-known sound installation artist, his father a passable painter*; and he grew up amongst the bohemians of sixties and seventies Melbourne.
Questioned by an interviewer about his ‘real name’, Bronzewing replied, “This is my real name, my true name, bestowed upon me by the Wurundjeri elders. The land itself named me and schooled me in its knowledge and history.” Official records however, indicate that Bronzewing’s real name was actually Logan Horn and that he was schooled at Scotch College in Hawthorn.
He regularly claimed to be ‘1/18th Indigenous’ on his mother’s side, and a direct descendent of Simon Wonga – a respected elder of the Wurundjeri clan who was present during the first white settlement of Melbourne. The Wonga is a type of native Australian pigeon and this was the inspiration for Logan’s own pseudonym, derived from the Common Bronzewing Pigeon (Phaps chalcoptera)**.
Bronzewing was accepted to the University of Melbourne in 1977 to formally study music but dropped out after less than a year. He was highly critical of his time at university, saying; “I am glad that I was able to have that experience, brief though it was. To see that totalitarian, musical sweatshop from the inside, but still escape with my spirit intact. There’s nothing that those Eurocentric fascists could possibly teach me that I couldn’t learn from listening to the rhythms of the Australian continent and the lessons of our indigenous elders. Plus, with the latter, I get to sleep in.”
Done with formal education and fed up with the city, Bronzewing moved to Healesville, a rustic town surrounded by bush, just north of Melbourne. He rented a crumbling Victorian-era house nearby Badger Creek and cobbled together a home studio in the lounge room. Although his time at university had been difficult, he had forged a rewarding friendship with one of his lecturers, ‘Savage’ James Bell. Bell was a respected studio guitarist who was mainly known for his work on the recordings of eccentric soundtrack composer Felix Ookean. Bell started working as a full-time session player in his early twenties and he sympathised with Bronzewing’s naivety and inexperience in the studio. He provided the budding composer with some basic recording gear and unused synthesisers obtained from the university.
One of Bronzewing’s early home recordings, Menura’s Rainforest was released as a private press 7” record in 1981 and distributed amongst friends and family of the artist. It was well-liked by the Melbourne alternative music scenesters and became something of a minor hit on community radio. Despite repeatedly and stridently opining that, “success is the swiftest route to mediocre art,” Bronzewing quietly reveled in his newfound popularity and it energised him to create more music. (He later clarified that this corollary only applied when the success befell other musicians.)
Notwithstanding this taste of mainstream acceptance, he remained fiercely independent and suspicious of authority, flatly rejecting any suggestions of record contracts or even influences from popular music. Bronzewing imagined a purity to his music that would only be sullied by elements from outside of his bushland microcosm. He insisted that “any interference from the ‘official’ music industry would be a dilution and a poison to [his] art. Can a platypus live in a creek that has been polluted by industry? I think not.”
Due to this modest success, in late 1982 Bronzewing was offered a spot on the staff of the ABC Natural History unit as a documentary soundtrack composer. For many musicians this would be a dream job, but the imposition of a work routine was too much for Bronzewing’s free spirit and he withdrew from the unit, and then the Australian mainland, without telling his employers. In fact, the ABC only became aware of his disappearance due to a news report on the blockade of the proposed Franklin River dam, where Bronzewing could clearly be seen on the front-line of the protest waving a placard that read, 'WON'T SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CRAYFISH?' The musician was arrested by Tasmanian police shortly after the broadcast, and once released, was too embarrassed to return to the ABC.
All of Bronzewing’s albums from the eighties and early nineties were recorded with the team of producer ‘Savage’ James Bell & multi-instrumentalist Sebastian Barbat. Barbat was an accomplished world musician who was well-versed in Middle Eastern instrumentation. Although he is credited with playing various ethnic stringed instruments and additional keyboard parts on these LPs, Bronzewing’s explicit and recurring instructions at the mixing desk were to increase the volume for his own parts at the expense of all others and Barbat’s playing on them is essentially inaudible.
When asked if the use of electronics was at odds in depicting the natural world, he famously scoffed, “There are rays living in the Tasman Sea that can generate 200 volts of electricity. There are insect larvae in Victorian caves that can emit powerful beams of light. I suppose you would ask them if what they are doing is at odds with nature.”
* Cornelius Henry Horn – Bronzewing’s father – was embroiled in controversy in 1997 when it was found that he was responsible for countless forgeries of 19th century artworks from the Heidelberg School. He was initially going to be charged with a criminal offence until art historians testified that ‘no reasonable person’ would have assumed the pieces were genuine, saying, “even the most casual glimpse should have indicated these were not authentic [...] In many cases the artist has added anachronistic flourishes in the background such as power lines and digital clocks and in one painting, although he has attempted to obscure it after the fact, the artist has obviously signed his own name.”
** Older members of the Wurundjeri clan told me that within Melbourne’s indigenous community, Bronzewing was only ever “begrudgingly tolerated – like a stray dog who hangs around so long, you've got to take him in,”
