Charles Wain

The Last Wave

ORIGINALLY WITHDRAWN from release, Charles Wain’s score for Peter Weir’s 1977 supernatural eco-thriller is a poignant work of minimalist electronic unease. Combining lonesome ARP Odyssey synth chords, discordant ARP Solina strings, romantic Spanish guitar, tape-manipulated didgeridoo, Floydian arpeggios and chunks of black dissonance, it’s an unsettling yet also deeply moving work possessed of a deep, forlorn power. Fascinatingly, the excellent sleevenotes reveal that “Charles Wain” was a pseudonym for eccentric Australian advertising jingle composer Wayne Myers, a man who placed hidden messages of socialist dissidence inside his KFC and corn chips jingles. Taken from Myers’ original master tapes, this is only the latest in Roundtable’s remarkable run of vinyl-only releases, which includes the complete original Walkabout soundtrack, combining the introspective John Barry score with six pop-psych oddities and prepared to the specific guidelines of the ill-fated 1971 LP release. Excellent work all round.