Mark Barrage
By Sophie in Mark Barrage | 0 comments
MP3: Hindsight
Video: Poisoned
“An album of intelligent, beautifully crafted, moody electronic pop music (which) hopefully will introduce Mark Barrage to a much wider audience beyond the confines of Melbourne’s indie scene.” - MESS + NOISE
“Scything ancient synth and electronic sounds squeeze into heavily warped, nimbly progressive rhythmic structures; textural abrasions melt into shimmering, minor key pop melodies… Delays is raw, bedroom-produced brilliance.” - MUSIC AUSTRALIA GUIDE (four stars)
“Catchy, warped and synthetic pop tunes that crackle and buzz like faulty electricity poles on a rainy night… 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.” - mX (four stars)
“It’s refreshing. And it’s ‘electronic’. And it’s ‘independent’. And it doesn’t really sound like anything else going around at the moment… It’s part Kraut (Neu, Kraftwerk), but kind of more disjointed. A little bit like Trans Am… it’s plain fucking fun. Delays is a pixelated diamond in the digital rough. Do yourself a proverbial. Chekkit.” - BEAT
“One of Melbourne’s finest fuzzy pop electronic wizards… reveals a dense, complicated album that is a few steps ahead of his American contemporaries like YACHT, Dan Deacon, and Panther” - THREE THOUSAND
Cracked pop fuzzbox MARK BARRAGE makes a nervy sound tonic, equal parts pop music EQd to breaking point and midnight crucifix synth-kraut. Three years in the making, Delays by Mark Barrage finds the dissonant electronic songster shift from the overtly lyrical, heartbreak-obsessed territory of his debut into realms of hard sound, dance timings, band-ish arrangements and bleary-eyed nighttime sensation. The haunting melodies and pop song format remain, but the production is more gassy and art damaged - with lyrics oftentimes obscured by batteries of electronic layers, or treated simply as concrete sound.The album’s mix of direct-pop intent, darkened electronic palette and woozy, pepped-up rhythms belies interests in punk performance as well as headphone electronics. Short and immediate vocal tunes intersperse with heavy instrumental, mood-laden vignettes, giving the record an overall, private/public tension, and the weird, compelling sound of labored programming destined for the band-room. DIY-produced at home with synthesizer, tapes, sampler, drum set, guitars and basic timeline-edit audio software, Delays’ accelerated, natural pace breathes new life into electronics’ artifice; working backwards to an affectation of life like vampiric possession, or experience felt in hindsight.
Mark Barrage has played over one hundred shows in Melbourne since 2003, many times alongside local indie highlights Panel of Judges, Love of Diagrams, Spider Vomit, ii, Hi God People, The Emergency, Always, Pets with Pets and Mistletone recording artists Francis Plagne, Kes and Beaches, among many more. Recent international supports include Dan Deacon, YACHT, Telepathe (all USA), El Guincho (Spain) and The Renderers (NZ).
Straddling the twin influences of electronic music and underground rock, Delays is a Morphean album in the spirit of Australia’s Severed Heads, the classic Komische groups and hard-art overseas labels Human Ear Music and Sacred Bones.
Mess + Noise review:
This might seem like a contradiction, considering the overall feeling of isolation and insularity, but this is the tension on which this album hinges. Ultimately Barrage draws the listener into his world by stealth and subtlety. It’s a world of many layers and meanings, which reveals more of itself with every repeat listening. And that is always the hallmark of a great work of art.
Delays is an album of intelligent, beautifully crafted, moody electronic pop music and hopefully will introduce Mark Barrage to a much wider audience beyond the confines of Melbourne’s indie scene.
by René Schaefer
Rave magazine review (Album of the Week - four stars):
Prime-grade minimal skronk-pop from Brisbane-born, Melbourne-based electronic whizz
A former Brisbane boy and certified “cracked pop fuzzbox”, Mark Barrage is one of those unassuming bedroom producers who muster up summarily non-pretentious, yet genuinely innovative records. Bleep-heavy and crackling with authentic static noise, Delays is a quiet, concise lo-fi gem, with half of its 14 tracks running under the two-minute mark. The album’s remarkable opening salvo covers at least half a dozen different genres without succumbing to imitation: Can-through-Ladytron-on-downers Crucifix At Midnight gives way to the unsettling Just Desserts, which blends syncopated old-school synth stabs with dubstep/grime-referencing disjointed voice snippets to a rather eerie effect, and pure electro-pop nugget Hindsight packs hidden Kraftwerkian emotion in Mark’s detached vocal. Elswhere, many of the synth sounds are almost 8-bit-like with their high-pitched zings; the beats are largely subdued, ticking like a vintage alarm clock underneath the warped electronic textures. Apart from Mark’s self-professed “shitty old equipment” wizardry, the album’s understated, haunting melodies grow bigger after a few repeated listens, also bringing a realisation that someone like the much-vaunted (albeit a bunch of years ago) US minimalist Casiotone For The Painfully Alone is essentially a one-trick pony and true lo-fi wonders often lurk in our own backyard. Curious and original, Delays could well be the Clarion Call for crappy ancient keyboard/drum machine enthusiasts everywhere.
****
DENIS SEMCHENKO
From the Herald Sun:
Music Australia Guide review:
From Drum Media:
Your artist/bandname is…?
Mark Barrage.
Your music is?
Horror sounds of the night.
Which acts inspired you to produce your own music and why?
My first band gig was with Gravel Samwidge - the underlooked Swamp group, infamous in Cairns and Brisbane - playing drunk-murder tunes as their 26th
bassist. Afterwards, in Melbourne, my model act was Das Butcher - the pedal-drone jukebox covers show performed by a suiciding frontman in apron. The best recent performance I’ve seen was by Melbourne duo Free Choice, who played one long, serial analogue pulse on synthesizers. When they play, all these acts seem to re-purpose the world, absorb it - makes me want to do the same.
What’s your wildest ambition for your music?
For it to disembody and razz people somehow, and for it to gush in torrents. I want to get closer to what it really is, free of expectation, and always
pick the bullshit early. I’d also like to see an arpeggiator, Korg MS series synth and lasers incorporated at sponsors’ expense.
Why should we come and see you?
You’re curious and my entertainment is an unknown pleasure. You have never heard my songs performed, and live I mix them with found cassettes, impassioned singing and tricky sampling. Everything has been prepared with you in mind. You are behind the mirror when I wake. You complete me.
How do you find the local live scene?
For as long as I’ve lived in Melbourne it’s been incredible. New venues open and there are no end of quality acts, old and new. There are mid-week residencies going and weekly live club nights for bands. People like Mistletone stage gigs in alternate venues, and there are still active artist-run spaces. Personally, I’m excited because new bands are sounding less noise and ambient metal right now, more analogue-electronic trance and drone punk.
What’s your greatest rocknroll moment?
Playing live on the back of a cruising boat, on the Brisbane river, on a bill with the band Small World Experience. Smoking weed with Tex Perkins
in a dingy stairwell, or being asked to play second guitar with Screamfeeder on national tour in the 1990s - I declined.
BP
mX review:
Three Thousand review:
Mark Barrage’s new album is much more avant-Krautrock than dance anthem, no matter how much the onesheet tries to tell you otherwise. One of Melbourne’s finest fuzzy pop electronic wizards has another heaped plate ready to shove down your throat. And we’re not just reviewing it because he’s our Music Editor either.
The second album from Mark Barrage brings a sound that is a bit more mature than the first. He reveals a dense, complicated album that is a few steps ahead of his American contemporaries like YACHT, Dan Deacon, and Panther. That being said, can someone tell us why he is still opening for Beaches and Love of Diagrams and not Kraftwerk?
Oh, and Mark? Let me know when you get back to Melbourne so I can tell you how I really feel.
email this | tag this | digg this | trackback | comment RSS feed