Laconic Melbournian Martin Kennedy is a man of diligence and patience, so perhaps it’s no surprise that his creative partnership with The Church leader Steve Kilbey has taken quite some time to result in a joint album (insert all sorts of cannabis puns here).

"It took three years … nearly four, actually; do you want me to tell you why?" he laughs. "It’s just the way it worked out because we live in different cities, we each head our own side projects, so it had stretched out for over three years – but that’s just how it went."

A marked stylistic departure from the ethereal soundscapes of ARIA-nominated ambient-popsters All India Radio (who only recently chalked up another winner with A Low High), Unseen Music, Unheard Words has Kilbey’s silken voice and ever-opaque lyrics all over it – songs like Maybe Soon, Eyes Ahead and Friends Are Gone could have easily sat among the latter-day Church nuggets – yet they all bear Martin’s own melodic touch and subdued arrangements.

"[Maybe Soon] was a really simple song," he admits. "I came up with the tune in about ten-fifteen minutes – a really basic tune – and I didn’t think Steve would like it, but when I sent it to him, he did and recorded vocals for that one; sometimes, the simplest things work, whereas you could spend days or weeks working on a track and it’s rubbish in the end – that doesn’t mean that short songs are going to work every time, but in that case, it did."

Proving that being a Victorian and leading his own band is not an obstacle in the way of collaborating with a Sydneysider (albeit an iconic one in this case), Martin was only slightly perturbed by third-party communication with long time Bondi resident Kilbey.

"The funny thing is we never actually worked together in the same room – for the first year of the project, we never even spoke or emailed; I’ve had no contact with Steve whatsoever, which is kind of weird, but we went through a third party – his brother John, who runs the record label," he reveals. "I’d send all the music to John and then John would send it on to Steve who’d do the vocals and send them back to me; we both worked in isolation but had full trust in what each other was doing, so there was actually no need to talk – in the end, we did, but for the first year, we didn’t have to."

As the testament to the abovementioned near-Zen approach, UMUW’s mantric, acoustic guitar-led opener Eyes Ahead feels like an instant karmic hit. "It was based around a sample from a song by another Sydney guy called Don Meares [primarily a jazz experimentalist – DS], which I really liked and decided to use in a song, so it kind of got put together around that sample, whereas other songs were constructed in an original way, beginning with guitar," Martin says. "That was a bit of an unusual way to do things, but that song is Steve’s favourite on the whole album – and funnier still, the sample Don Meares gave me, he was actually sampling one of my old songs!"

Wow, that pretty much redefines the notion of a ‘roundabout way’. "Exactly!"

Kilbey/KENNEDY’s UNSEEN MUSIC, UNHEARD WORDS is out now through Inevitable/MGM. www.myspace.com/kilbeykennedy

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