Ed Kuepper marks 45 years with triple retrospective releases

He may be best known for forming Brisbane punk outfit The Saints, but Ed Kuepper is mining his rich vein of work since then.

Ed Kuepper of Saints, Aints, Laughing Clowns and solo fame

Ed Kuepper was never one to rest on his laurels. Within three years of his first recording with seminal Brisbane punk band The Saints, he’d quit to form post-punk outfit Laughing Clowns and launch a prolific solo career.

In recent years he’s been playing with latest incarnation of Saints-inspired band The Aints.

Now, to mark his 45th anniversary as a recording artist, he is taking a rare backward glance to release retrospectives of three phases of his career.

The results: Ed Kuepper – The Singles ’86-’96, Laughing Clowns’ Golden Days: When Giants Walked the Earth and The Aints’ Live at the Marrickville Bowlo.

“I guess it came out of last year where everything shut down, and my manager said, ‘Look, we can’t just sit around listening to old records, put out some of your own!’ So that’s what we did,” Kuepper recalls.

Of the singles collection, he says: “We took the 20 A-sides that we released as 7”, 12” or CD singles – which is what started to happen in the early ’90s – and put them together, and it’s the first time these songs have been put together like that.

Ed Kuepper

“Some of them have never been on vinyl, some of them have never been on CD before. I’d never heard them together like that… The thing that struck me was that they were really cohesive and really varied at the same time.

“The Clowns compilation is the same really, it’s the first time on vinyl for sure, and they weren’t all singles – this is just a really strong collection of the Clowns’ music; it’s a curated collection, I guess.

“It covers the band from start to finish; it’s a severely edited curation but it works.

“The Aints Live, well that in itself is one for the fans because it’s the entire The Church of Simultaneous Existence album that The Aints released a couple of years ago, played live before it was actually recorded in the studio.

“It sounds like a live record, it’s got mistakes in it, the versions are sometimes a bit different to the recorded versions, it’s got all the things you want in a rock ’n’ roll live record, I think.”

Kuepper says The Aints haven’t officially broken up, but their future is unclear.

“What I’m doing this year are shows with Jim White (The Dirty Three),” he says.

Ed Kuepper (left) with Jim White. Picture: Anna White

“I asked him – I’ve long been a fan of his playing and luckily he likes a lot of my stuff and has stated he’s been influenced by Clowns and Saints and that sort of thing.

“He’s a brilliant drummer. We’re gonna do some phenomenally outstandingly good shows – I can’t put it any other way.

“We’re doing a range of material from across the decades.

“Everything is gonna change from night to night, we’re just gonna throw caution to the wind really.”

Ever the collaborator, Kuepper also has teamed up with the Alister Spence Trio to form Android Ecosystem, who earlier in the year released their pre-pandemic double album.

“I may be doing some shows closer to the end of the year with a much more experimental trio,” he says.

Albums out May 29. Ed Kuepper and Jim White play Melbourne’s Rising festival on May 26, touring nationally May-July