Audio – Minor Works of Popular Music
Released October 2023
Support Material Now or Never EOI
Critical Praise
“One of the year’s most inventive, hypnotic concept albums”
The A.V Club
“…beautifully ornate pop with a haunted heart”
Bandcamp
“Minor Works, the duo’s first outing of original material, is a fascinating tragic-comedy of sorts. Here, we encounter a world in ruin on the alluring ‘Revelations’, unshakable personal dread heightened by waking-up on bathroom floors and tongue-in-cheek vignettes from the arts world.”
The Quietus
“Popular Music make a pretty good case that in all its brilliant pointlessness a song can still, in whatever tiny way, change the world.”
For The Rabbits
“If you get the change go see Popular Music – they’ll squeeze your heart and then they’ll set fire to it”
Rocksteady Records
“The stuff of future music myth”
Cyclone Wehner, NME, theMusic.com.au, Purple Sneakers
About us
Zac Pennington
Songwriter/performer Zac Pennington has spent nearly two decades charting a strange and singular path through the arteries of independent pop music. As founder and creative director for the musical group Parenthetical Girls, Pennington self-released four critically acclaimed full-length albums (and countless other recordings) via his own Slender Means Society imprint — releases supported by extensive touring throughout Europe and North America.
Over the course of his career, Pennington has written for and toured as a member of the experimental group Xiu Xiu, and has shared stages with David Byrne, Rufus Wainwright, Perfume Genius, Devendra Banhart, Dirty Projectors, Deerhoof and more. His works have been performed at art institutions like the Guggenheim, the Getty Museum, REDCAT (Los Angeles), and St. Ann’s Warehouse (New York City), as well as numerous international arts and music festivals, including the Donaufestival (Vienna), Primavera Sound (Barcelona), Intersecciones (Spain), PuSh Festival (Vancouver, B.C.), Bumbershoot (Seattle), New Island Festival (NYC), and PICA’s Time-Based Arts Festival (Portland). He is also the recipient of an Oregon Arts Commission grant, and Sound Magazine’s “Songwriter Of the Year” award.
Prudence Rees-Lee
Prudence Rees-Lee is an Australian artist who divides her time between Melbourne (AU) and Los Angeles (USA). She draws on sounds from across the spectrum of popular and obscure music to create work that defies easy categorization. She is a multi-instrumentalist with expertise in cello and synthesis, and a prolific performer of new and experimental music.
As a songwriter, she has released two baroque pop, full-length LPs — Court Music From the Planet of Love (Special Award Records 2013) and Growing Closer (Eastmint 2019), each to critical acclaim. Her recorded output also includes experimental tapes (Stereophonic Experiments in Magnetic Tape and Circuitry 2020), orchestral recordings (Inner Voices, 2022), multichannel works (Crystal Universe and Beyond Nature, 2022), and music multiple music videos.
In addition to her own music, Prudence has contributed countless recordings as a session musician for artists including Lehmann B Smith, Helena Plazzer, Esther Hannaford and Chelsea Rose. She has worked extensively in theatre, primarily with the experimental, multi-award-winning company Four Larks, and composed and performed original music The Simple Simples (2015 – 2016), directed by John Gilkey (Cirque Du Soleil). Since 2015 she has also worked with scientists from NASA and Stanford to investigate artistic responses to their research, particularly ways their processes could inform new approaches to sound.
Her work has been supported by Arts Victoria, Creative Victoria, The Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio, Flor De Sol (Bolivia), The Getty (USA), New Music USA, The National Gallery of Victoria, The Melbourne Animation Festival, Australian Embassy (Berlin), Melbourne Fringe Festival, and Hollywood Fringe Festival, and has consistently received strong support on Melbourne community radio, as well as FBi (Sydney), 4ZZZ (Brisbane) and RTR (Perth), the ABC’s Radio National and Double J. Music she has written has been featured in TV (most recently ABC’s Crazy Fun Park, 2023), podcasts, dance, and fashion shows and reviewed in national publications such as The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.