Ed Kuepper
The Street Theatre, 15 Childers St., 2601 Canberra Directions
Fri 31.07.2026 19:00
2026 marks the 50th year as a recording artist for legendary Australian musician Ed Kuepper. To celebrate he is taking to the road with The Exploding Universe (of Ed Kuepper) a full band performance featuring the added talents of drummer Mark Dawson, bassist Peter Oxley, keyboard player Alister Spence and brass arranger Eamon Dilworth as they tackle material from right across Ed’s illustrious 50-year career.
From the release of The Saints epochal 7" (I’m) Stranded in August 1976, via the genre-defying Laughing Clowns, an ARIA award winning solo career spanning some 30+ stand alone albums / compilations and live recordings, side journeys into The Aints, The Aints! and movie soundtracks plus continued sonic exploration via collaborations with Dirty Three drummer Jim White and jazznerds Asteroid Ekosystem, to a recent world tour back where is all began with The Saints ’73-’78; Ed Kuepper has forged, flourished and conquered the recorded medium many times over.
“For me Ed is a prime mover, a musician who has transformed music numerous times over, always swimming upstream, always seeking new terrain, always creating on his own terms. It’s a vast, singular body of work, no one else could have produced it. I get the same pleasure listening to Ed as I do listening to Neil Young or John Martyn or Patti Smith or Michael Rother.” - Steve Cross / Remote Control records
Performers
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Ed KuepperThe Exploding Universe of Ed Kuepper returns to stages this April in celebration of the remastered reissued vinyl release of 1992’s ARIA winning (Best Independent release) solo effort Black Ticket Day plus Law Of Nature, the 1984 post-punk classic from Kueppers influential post-Saints outfit, Laughing Clowns.
Released on March 29th and available for pre-order now, Black Ticket Day and Law Of Nature join recent reissued solo efforts; 1996’s Frontierland, the previously unreleased Mr. MiraKle, 1991’s much-celebrated Honey Steels Gold and the 1984 debut Electrical Storm as a part of Kueppers collaboration with Melbourne’s Remote Control records,
“Kuepper’s purple patch of the first half of the 1990s is something extraordinary, and Black Ticket Day (1992) is a jewel in his crown. It’s as expansive as its predecessor Honey Steel’s Gold yet more electric; features pop gems “It’s Lunacy” and “Real Wild Life” but also wig-outs like “Blind Girl Stripper” and “All My Ideas Run to Crime”. Law of Nature (1984) is a heat-haze of an album, drawing as Kuepper has said on memories of growing up in the semi-rural suburbs of Brisbane. It manages to find a perfect fit for the experiental colours of earlier Laughing Clowns releases within a set of disciplined song-forms. A classic of Australian post-punk featuring the original recording of ‘Eternally Yours.'” – John Encarnacao, author, Ed Kuepper’s Honey Steel’s Gold for 33 1/3.
For the April tour Kuepper will again feature drummer Mark Dawson, Sunnyboys bassist Peter Oxley, pianist Alister Spence and brass arranger Eamon Dilworth.
“This was a mesmerising performance with Kuepper’s band, containing decades of experience, delivering a thrilling set that was like a greatest hits collection. Celebrating the release on vinyl of two of his solo albums (‘Honey Steel’s Gold’ and ‘Electrical Storm’), Kuepper solo work is a brilliant mix of the esoteric, jazz, psychedelic and absolute unadorned commercial pop – sometimes all within one song.” – Backstreet Mafia
“The band is blistering; Peter Oxley and Mark Dawson are locked in as tight as Superglue stuck between two fingers. Alister Spence is masterful on keys. Eamon Dilworth on trumpet brings echoes of Miles Davis’s “Sketches in Spain” set to a solid backbeat. It rocks.” – i94bar.com
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Feel PresentsTouring: Dirty Three, Caribou, Ed Kuepper, Four Tet, Osees, Pigs x7, Built to Spill, The Mark Of Cain
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