\Bio\\\

Once upon a time, Anthony made a song using some machines.

Except instead of making a normal rock song, it resembled either something that would have been heard on AM radio a bit before his birth, or something to be composed many years after his death. Its hard to say which.

In any case, there were quite a few instruments, and Anthony had to play all of them himself because he didn't have the social skills to find people and start a band.

He lives in Hobart, Australia, spending most of his time in his bedroom studio. Contrary to popular myth, he is not Norwegian, and does not work in a library.



\Radio Khartoum's bio sheet\\\

Music for Librarians, overdue second album by Hobart-based Anthony Rochester, finally hits Australian shelves in April 2006, after being released in the US, Japan and Scandinavia in 2005.

A shy fellow, Anthony ends up playing the majority of the instruments on his albums himself. This time out, in addition to vocals, he plays piano, bass, drums, guitars, violins, percussion, recorder, and a host of keyboards. Recording at home, he borrows the instruments he doesn't have (not the album liner note's thankyou to so-and-so's ex-girlfriend, et al).

When he can't make the sounds himself, he borrows a musician: a cellist here, a flautist there. Notable guest contributors on this album include Norwegian artist Christer Jensen aka Micromars (electronics on the album's closing track) and Welsh songwriter Matt Jones alias Norman de Plume of the Hepburns (lyrics on two songs). The Star Trek-esque backing vocals that grace the song "Metropolitain" are supplied by the mezzo-soprano next door. Anthony reportedly noticed her, evenings, as she would sing down the block to call her cat home.

In a private email intercepted by Radio Khartoum, Matt Jones compared Mr. Rochester's music to a stained-glass window, adding, "It is music for interiors, bored Tuesday afternoons with nothing much to do but with a smouldering-cigarette desire to do something, music to fill the void like particles of dust illuminated by coloured light."

How do these dust particles emitted by a shy Tasmania multi-instrumentalist come to the attention of a US label like Radio Khartoum? By way of Norway, of course. Anthony's song "Elephants" appeared in a collection compiled by Remington Super 60 and Micromars, which purported to document the sound of young Norway.

Radio Khartoum will not guarantee that Anthony has or has not heard of any of the following musical reference points: mid to late 1960s French pop, Serge Gainsbourg productions in particular, with their wonderful, chunky bass guitar sound; Bertrand Burgalat; Komeda (Krzysztof or the band from Sweden); Eno's "Another Green World"; Remington Super 60; Shuggie Otis; or Stereolab.