Guitarist Mick Turner, violinist Warren Ellis and drummer Jim White had kicked around in many different bands across the Melbourne music scene before finally coalescing as an improvisatory instrumental trio in the early 1990s. The ceiling would seem fairly low for noisy rock music without the slightest vocals or lyrics, but Dirty Three have gone on to become an enduring and influential presence felt around the world—and with more than their fair share of side projects and collaborations over the decades. While not technically their debut, this self-titled 1994 album has since been acknowledged as one of Dirty Three’s earliest proper calling cards. And it does indeed capture the early blossoming of the band’s idiosyncratic rustle and flow, starting with the quickening pace and inevitable upward climb of the 10-minute opener “Indian Love Song”. Also introduced across that track are Turner’s spidery guitar lines, White’s open percussive tinkering and Ellis’ alternately flittering and grounded violin passages, all eventually cresting into waves of vigorous rock. That distinctive violin takes the immediate lead on the stirring and sloshing “Better Go Home Soon” as the players apply and release tension with intuitive grace. “Odd Couple” centres on an extended accordion segment from Ellis, which gives the track a feathery lightness by comparison. A riff on a Kim Salmon instrumental piece that the Scientists founder never recorded, “Kim’s Dirt” is slower and more subdued as it prioritises quiet rumination over the squalling racket of “The Last Night”. “Dirty Equation”, meanwhile, is a tighter and more angular rock song that closes out the record with a hard-earned sense of catharsis. But perhaps the brightest gem here is “Everything’s Fucked”, a longtime live staple that established the blueprint of what was to come on both 1996’s breakthrough Horse Stories and 1998’s mellower Ocean Songs. It features the album’s most natural and gradual build, with hopeful splashes of melody against the woody rattle and drag of White’s drumming. Taken on its own, it’s easy to see from those bewitching five minutes why members of Dirty Three have since worked with Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, Cat Power, Bill Callahan, PJ Harvey and Marianne Faithfull. This album is only the beginning of a winding and rewarding career that has unfolded as naturally as any one of these individual tracks.