Mess Esque

***Mess Esque are a duo featuring music and instruments by Mick Turner and words and voice by Helen Franzmann. Their self-titled album is a beguiling travelogue of restless, somnambulant wanderings. Perhaps best known as one of the Dirty Three, Mick’s been playing guitar and making music with many collaborators for forty years. Around here, we love his paintings too—-but revere him especially for his solo music. Mick’s last record was 2013’s “Don’t Tell the Driver,” a work that found him departing from his traditional hermetic instrumental template by employing a rhythm section and brass charts and even collaborating with a vocalist. After all the purely instrumental music he’s made with Dirty Three and solo, a singer is now part of the sound he’s hearing in his head these days; while demoing new material, he realized that he was again writing music that needed lyrics –- and for that matter, someone other than himself to sing them. But who? In 2019, he was introduced to Helen through a mutual friend who’d produced her last album. Under the name Mckisko, Helen has released three albums over the past 12 years, working and touring with a range of Australian musicians along the way. Her music has been described as numinous and transformative. Her most recent album “Southerly” saw her moving into a more expansive sound which led to an openness and excitement around further collaboration.