Whirlywirld

Whirlywirld
Origin	Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Genres	Post punk
Years active	1978–1980
Labels	Missing Link
Associated acts	Equal Local, Hugo Klang, Orchestra of Skin and Bone, NO, Max Q
Past members	see Members section below

Whirlywirld was an Australian post punk band led by Ollie Olsen in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and the first of his musical collaborations with drummer John Murphy. They played in Melbourne and Sydney and were supporters of the Melbourne little band scene.

In 1976, as a guitarist, Ollie Olsen formed one of the first punk crews in Melbourne, The Reals, who on occasion shared the bill at suburban dance halls with The Boys Next Door. The Reals would eventually evolved into The Negatives, but before that Olsen had become dissatisfied with their exclusively savage, guitar-based attack and left. Olsen went on to form The Young Charlatans. The Young Charlatans could be described as a seminal supergroup, consisting of Olsen, guitarist Rowland Howard (later of The Boys Next Door/The Birthday Party), drummer Jeffrey Wegener (Laughing Clowns) and bassist Janine Hall (later of The Saints). But if the volatile Charlatans were an extraordinary outfit - closer, earlier, to art-punk than almost anybody - their greater potential went unfulfilled. After a very brief, stormy existence, the band inevitably imploded. By then Ollie had met John Murphy. Murphy at the time was the drummer for another early Melbourne punk band, NEWS.

The pair forming Whirlwirld in 1978 with their stated priority, from the outset, to go electronic, determined as they were to take flight from the sonic limitations of the conventional, guitar-based rock format. Whirlywirld was completed by two keyboardists, who got credited with 'electronics', Andrew Duffield and Simon Smith (Olsen, by this point, had abandoned guitar in favour of 'electronics') together with guitarist Dean Richards. Whirlywirld refused to play live but they did rehearse religiously.

In June 1979 the band released a self-titled debut EP. Whirlywirld made their live debut at The Crystal Ballroom later that year, by which time Duffield left to join The Models and had been replaced by Philip Jackson.

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