Dear Valued Customer is the sound of two musicians revelling in the newfound music playground that they were discovering together, literally, under the one roof. In 1993 Pieter Bourke teamed up with fellow Australian musician David Thrussell and began writing and producing songs for the second album by Thrussell’s band Snog. After the success of Snog’s first album Thrussell was looking to further refine and develop the bands combination of techno industrial music and sharp lyrics detailing the absurdities and corporate over-reach of contemporary life. Bourke had recently left his group Eden after feeling that he needed to pursue a different musical path.

Thrussell was awoken by a 3am knock on his door one evening. Bourke was now homeless, the result of a devastating fire that had just torn through his apartment and studio, and he needed somewhere to sleep. Now under the same roof, Bourke and Thrussell found common musical ground through a shared love of European electronic pop music such as Depeche Mode, Kraftwerk and Talk Talk.

Working within the framework provided by Thrussell’s vision for Snog, the two vegetarians began a fruitful partnership which would see them write, record and release a vast body of work in the ensuing years. Bourke’s compositional and technical skills complemented Thrussell’s grand vision perfectly.