Don't Delay

Delays
Mark Barrage
Mistletone, 2008
4 stars

A Barrage show is unpredictable at best – a relatively inoffensive-looking bloke, he’s just as likely to start absently throwing objects into the audience as he is to sit down at an unattended drum kit and ‘air drum’ along to his own loops. That you don’t know what’s coming next is the perfect live treatment for the Melbourne artist’s music – catchy, warped and synthetic pop tunes that crackle and buzz like faulty electricity poles on a rainy night. Hindsight melds low-fi samples with Casio keys to create a reflective digital jam, title track Delays is like the soundtrack to a 22nd-century jail-break and Is Digitalis is like a Roni Size nightmare commited to tape. Delays has a real universal appeal – it’s at once a bedroom dance record and a DIY rock record, and it’ll find a place in garage CD-players and indie club sound-systems alike.

Artwork: B
You can't beat a bit of CMYK action. I've only seen the press mail-out, but I'm assuming the proper one has three Rs, an A and an E inside the cover.

Published in mX, Thursday October 23, 2008.