David Bridie

David Bridie ranks among Australia's foremost forward-thinking composers and performers, integrating his activities with ensembles and studio releases alongside the creation of numerous film scores. His path opened in 1983 when the classically trained musician first collaborated with guitarist John Phillips. At that time Bridie was developing the composition "Moving Around" and asked Phillips to join him in sonic exploration before they tracked the piece at the music department studio of Melbourne's LaTrobe University, employing a borrowed 808 drum machine and a bass player. The finished recording of "Moving Around" extended to a sweeping seven-and-a-half minutes.

Bridie and Phillips devoted the remainder of the session to a sequence of atmospheric instrumentals, with additional friends contributing incidental details. Although most of those pieces remained unreleased, they ignited the pair's passion for open-ended ambient textures that would define the aesthetic of the group Not Drowning Waving and simultaneously planted the initial interest in scoring for film. The band's name derived from a variation on Stephen Smith's poem "Drowning Not Waving."

"Moving Around" appeared in April 1984 on the newly established independent imprint Rampant Records, backed by two of the instrumentals. During the subsequent album sessions the facility provided by Rampant Records proved to be the label owner's spare room and kitchen, equipped only with an eight-track recorder. Bridie, Phillips and their associates captured Another Pond while pausing for the neighbor's dog to cease barking, then shifted to John Phillips' lounge room for mixdown in a more professional setting. The resulting work drew comparisons to experimental and ambient innovators Brian Eno and Durutti Column. Live presentations by Not Drowning Waving stood out for prioritizing light projections over conventional illumination of the performers.

An expanded lineup approached Not Drowning Waving's second album, The Little Desert, by securing a spacious, vacant church hall and installing recording gear for extended live takes that stretched across days and late nights. By then John Phillips and David Bridie had already launched their film-scoring work after filmmaker Mark Worth approached them for the documentary Canoe Man, which examined canoe builders from Manus Island off the Papua New Guinea coast. Their research into Papua New Guinea music and culture for that project soon influenced Not Drowning Waving's own output. The band's next offering was the six-track EP Sing Sing (pidgin English for "song" or "performing music"), captured in a conventional studio nestled amid bushland on a hillside outside Melbourne.

The group's affinity for unconventional recording environments persisted when they tracked the 1987 album Cold and the Crackle inside the Great Hall at Montsalvat, an artists' village constructed by its founders on Melbourne's outskirts during the 1930s. Not Drowning Waving had by then grown to an eleven-piece ensemble, yet for Claim the musicians reverted largely to their core configuration—apart from one addition—in pursuit of more conventional song forms. Penny Hewson, previously of Sea Stories, appeared on Claim and joined the subsequent touring lineup, contributing whatever instruments the remaining members could not play.

Following the Claim tour, David Bridie and bandmate James Southall traveled to Papua New Guinea on holiday, established connections with local artists and musicians, and began preparations to record the next Not Drowning Waving album on location. PNG superstar George Telek co-wrote and performed on several tracks of Tabaran, which became the band's first international release on a major label through Warner Brothers. A tour that incorporated a handful of PNG artists, expanding the ensemble once more to ten members, played in both countries. In 1990 classically trained cellist Helen Mountford entered the core group. After the PNG tour Bridie, Mountford and Russell Bradley launched the string-focused side project My Friend the Chocolate Cake, while Not Drowning Waving focused on scoring the films Proof, Hammers Over the Anvil and Richard Lowenstein's Say a Little Prayer.

The 1992 album Circus represented a radical departure for Not Drowning Waving on multiple levels. For the first time the group considered bringing in an external producer, selecting Hugh Jones, whose credits included Simple Minds and Echo and the Bunnymen. Jones recommended a studio in the Welsh countryside, and the record completed there during several months proved to be the band's final statement. After a year of touring the members could not reach consensus on future direction and chose to disband.

Bridie and Mountford turned their attention to My Friend the Chocolate Cake, while Bridie sustained his film work and received an award for the score to In a Savage Land. In mid-2000 he issued his debut solo album, Act of Free Choice, on which John Phillips again collaborated on three tracks, forwarding his parts via the internet from his home in Europe. Contemporary computer technology enabled Bridie to revisit the experimental terrain first explored by early Not Drowning Waving, now with vastly expanded possibilities. Encircling his voice and electric piano lies an array of found sounds ranging from Papua New Guinea conch shells to short-wave radio transmissions of morse code, all underpinned by bass and drums.