Not Drowning, Waving provide guitar. Their name is derived from Stevie Smith's poem "Not Waving but Drowning". Rowan McKinnon soon joined on bass guitar and they recorded "Moving Around" with a drum machine. Other atmospheric instrumentals were recorded at the LaTrobe University's music department's studio. "Moving Around" was released as their debut single in April 1984 on the Rampant Records label. While recording tracks for the debut album, "Another Pond", Bridie and Phillips joined McKinnon (also on guitar) in the ambient pop band, Easter, with Russel Bradley on drums and percussion, and Tim Cole on vocals. Cole became sound engineer and recording producer
The Lost Leader (poem) was widely anthologised, and recognised for its direct attack. One editor wrote: Another wrote that the verses "have more bad feeling than poetry". Stephen Fry quotes the poem as an example of the use of dactylic metre to great effect, creating verse with "great rhythmic dash and drive". The poem is not in pure dactylic tetrameter, but catalectic. There was much discussion on whether the poem was addressed to Wordsworth. In response to queries, Browning always made it clear that the poem was based on Wordsworth, but stopped short of saying that it was directly addressed to Wordsworth himself, instead