GLENN BENNIE, former member of much-missed Australian sonic explorers The Underground Lovers, expounds on the process of making the new album Emptiness Is Our Business, his latest venture under the moniker GB3. BRETT COLLINGWOOD listens in.

GB3’s second album Emptiness Is Our Business finds former Underground Lovers’ guitarist Glenn Bennie pairing his unique talents for guitar/electronic soundscaping with a variety of guest vocalists. Artists as diverse as Steve Kilbey, Adalita, Angie Hart and the late Grant McLennan all appear on the album, but if that suggests a maddeningly disjointed listening experience, the reality is anything but. Bennie has long been a master at creating atmosphere, and while the individual songs on the album are as varied as the vocalists who’ve added lyrics to them, Bennie’s gift for mood and his distinctive, post-shoegaze guitar style ties everything together.

His instrumental pieces evidently brought out different sides of the vocalists’ personalities – for instance, Steve Kilbey’s breathy, emotive incantation on the opening Famished is a world away from his Church persona; similarly, the forceful rocker Gold Man finds Magic Dirt’s Adalita gleefully experimenting with her vocals, layering them densely.

Bennie himself couldn’t be happier with the results. “Famished was the first track completed with vocals and I thought ‘if they are all half as good as this, I’d be rapt. I felt like there was so much of himself that he [Kilbey] put into the lyrics; to me it sounds sort of Leonard Cohen-esque in a way.

“Adalita had been experimenting in Magic Dirt with multi-layering vocals and I think she saw this as an opportunity to go overboard with that because there were no real restrictions, so she really got into it.”

Perhaps the most poignant track on the album though is the Grant McLennan-sung Actress On A Mattress, one of the last things he recorded before his death. His unmistakable guitar lines and laidback delivery on the song are a fitting valedictory.

Bennie admits to being overawed that McLennan agreed to be part of his project. “For me it was kind of uncomfortable because he was always a big hero of mine, and it was only after this track that I became sort of comfortable in his presence, if you know what I mean. But he was so giving to the whole thing. He said ‘you know I’ve got an idea for this guitar line,’ and he played it and I thought ‘that sounds Go-Betweens, this is fantastic!’ I said to him ‘now I know where I’ve stolen all my guitar lines from over the years’.”

For Bennie the process of making Emptiness Is Our Business has been one of letting go – he was initially reluctant to hand over his creations for others to contribute to. “I was just a bit reluctant to invite people, mainly because I felt that they might turn around and say ‘are you joking? Why would I bother doing that?’ But it was like, they were honoured to be asked and it gave me a lot of confidence about writing the music, that people seemed to be excited about being involved in the project. It sort of helped me immensely to say ‘I can go on from here and do bigger and better things’.”

In fact, Bennie’s already started work on the next GB3 album: “I want to go down similar lines and work with different people again and just take the concept a little bit further.”

Emptiness Is Our Business is out now through Rubber/EMI

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