OLLO – APE DELAY

Sydney synth duo Ollo present a third album of blips, beeps and whirs and continue their trend of creating sounds that resemble the murmur of mechanical machines at a robot cocktail party. Ape Delay is a quirky pop album with a cascade of hooks; embodied in the mechanical assembly of the music’s synthesised instrumentation and topped off with clever lyrics delivered in a style inspired more by 80s synth pop than Kraftwerk. The single and album opener Transistor Resistor paints a sonic picture that conjures imagery of robot manufacture on a factory conveyor belt and All The Bored proceeds similarly before opening up into an sprawling electronic jam. Album highlight Burn More Coal begins with a potentially prophetic lyric, “Do you give them a kiss and forget their name?/Leave all your love at your own front door and fall into the sun”, before launching into a dark urgent groove and questioning the rate at which we’re torpedoing towards the metaphorical end of the line, while the emotive Full Stop Blue signs off the album beautifully. Ape Delay may immediately sound as though it’s the soundtrack to an old Commodore 64 video game but it’s a serious achievement in marrying concept with good songwriting.

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