Album Notes

New expanded edition of Steve Kilbey and Martin Kennedy's classic debut album Unseen Music Unheard words. Contains six bonus tracks.

Ever since Air’s Moon Safari came out in 1998, the term ‘chillout’ seemed to be forever hijacked by Ibiza compilations. Fortunately Martin Kennedy, the man in charge of All India Radio’s downtempo instrumentals since 1999, knows that while cheese and fine wine complement each other, their respective musical equivalents don’t. So does The Church supremo Steve Kilbey; firm adherents to the quality aesthetic, the two share a similar approach to music-making. Nearly four years in the works, Unseen Music Unheard Words is a calm, slow-paced record tailor-made for Sunday mornings, its twelve tracks sung by Kilbey in his inimitable half-hushed manner (with periodic high harmonies from brother John). Stately opener Eyes Ahead is followed by the similarly unhurried, yet more melancholic My Will Be Yours, its lazily-picked minor pattern chiming over warm synth whirr. Built over a textbook acoustic guitar progression, Maybe Soon nevertheless possesses a solid dose of charm and would be perfectly at home on The Church’s latest opus Untitled #23, as would Thought Of Leaving, Kilbey revisiting his own You Took’s opening bass harmonics to gorgeous effect. The sombre double of Naked As A Star and Friends Are Gone comes as a deft finishing brush, and while Steve might wince at the dreaded ‘C-word’, I doubt anyone else is going to disagree about UMUW’s essence: excellent chillout music. - Rave Magazine Tuesday, 30 June 2009

Occasionally side projects can be something really spectacular. Steve Kilbey (The Church) and Martin Kennedy (All India Radio) have been working individually in separate cities on a series of songs that bury you in lavish dreamscapes. There's a sense of nostalgia, like flipping through an old photo album or late night dreams full of fleeting images. Kennedy's landscapes are soft, warm and grainy as Kilbey's lyrics conjure visions of times gone by; he whispers phrases as though telling us intimate secrets whilst trumpet players blow slinky lines under beds of electronica, strings and tapping Morse code messages. At times it's like sitting in at a spooky jazz club at 4am where "angels play Dixie on their horns". This isn't an album where you pick favourite songs - you simply immerse yourself in the whole lush experience. The good news is they're recording a follow up. - Reverb, Mark Moldre 4.5/5

As a lyricist, Steve Kilbey has a gift for enhancing musical moods with intriguing narratives that meander between myth, dream and nonsense. This blind collaboration with Melbourne soundscape artist Martin Kennedy (All India Radio) happened by mail over the course of a year: a match made in some intangible corner of unified cosmic consciousness. Kilbey’s melodies whisper and croak of epic farewells, biblical battles, shades of starlight and lovers from other worlds. Kennedy meets him more than halfway on a magic carpet of soporific washes and rhythms, echoing strings and sighing choral beds.
- Michael Dwyer, The Age 13 June 2009

Steve Kilbey & Martin Kennedy Present Unseen Music Unheard Words (Inevitable) These two Australian fellows have only recently first spoken on telephone, but they are already at work on a follow-up to this fine first collaboration. Martin Kennedy of All India Radio and Pray TV created the music and mailed it to Steve Kilbey of The Church who wrote words and sang them over Martin’s melodies. 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. - George Parsons Dream Magazine #10