With his debut EP Offtime already making waves here and overseas, Melbourne musician Harts — aka one-man band Darren Hart — is glad he waited until now to release the five-track disk.
Hart finished the EP in late 2011, but “didn't want to release the EP to nobody; like, I didn't want it to fly under the radar, because I kind of liked it and I thought it would do really well. I wanted to wait until I had the right amount of buzz or attention before I released it, just to give it a better chance to do well, so I waited for a couple of years.”
Written and recorded entirely by Hart in his bedroom, the tracks are peppered with thick drum sounds, plenty of synth, and the odd heavy guitar solo. “I used the old, kind of '80s-style sounds and mixed them with modern contemporary dance sounds,” Hart says of recording drums using analogue equipment plugged into his laptop.
Hart admits he felt some trepidation in handing his tracks to Lars Stalfors, known for production work with The Mars Volta, for mixing. “At the start, I was doubting everything. What he did was basically just make it more edgy. He just provided extra ears on my work to point me in the direction of what he really liked about my sound.”
Hart's sound, particularly at live shows, has drawn comparisons to his own idol, Prince. Although he's quick to label the Purple Rain singer “untouchable”, Hart says that the comparison means his work is coming across as he intended. “[Prince] is the only other person that's doing my stuff well or doing that kind of hybrid of electronic-funk-synth-pop, whatever you want to call it, with guitar solos and things like that well. He was the only one who did it, so I think that's where the comparison comes from.”
A Harts performance is just that: a visual and aural sensation designed to engage the audience entirely. “It'll be cool to watch: the programming, [me] playing the keyboard, playing the bass, and watching the songs take shape,” he says of the “high-energy hybrid of a dance-rock show.”
Harts plays the following dates
Thu Mar 21 — Alhambra Lounge (Brisbane)Fri Mar 22 — The World Bar (Sydney)
Fri Mar 29 — Espy Front Bar (Melbourne)
