Predrag Delibasich is a man in the midst of a journey. The journey began on the other side of the world in a country – the former Yugloslavia – that fell prey to internal political and cultural tensions. In the early 1990s, Delibasich moved to Perth, formed a band (Sokkol), then another band (Soviet Valves), another (Bamodi) and joined a couple of others along the way (Airport City Shuffle and Abe Sada). Somewhere in the midst of those mixed and varied musical pursuits, Delibasich – known as Pex for the benefit of the legion of Australians for whom European languages are the stuff of ignorance and frustration – found time to pursue his own solo interests, including the solo bass outfit Bassta! Pex.

At a pinch you can discern a distant theme running through Pex’s work – the industrial punk of Soviet Valves was an opaque inflection of the brutal noise of Bamodi – yet the more significant theme is that of artistic exploration. Delibasich’s latest record, a vinyl/CD combination comprising a 7” (‘Serpent Bites the Young Lion’ b/w ‘Happy Hobo’) and 6-track EP (This Season’s Colourful Tones), confirms that Pex hasn’t finished wandering through the eclectic artistic gardens of his mind quite yet.

Trying to find a cute genre within which to locate the music on This Season’s Colourful Tones is like nailing jelly to a wall. The dominant ingredients are rhythm and colour. ‘Happy Hobo’ opens with a percussive beat that draws equally from Middle East and post-Bauhaus industrial culture of Eastern Europe; its intensity broken by flashes of electronic melody. ‘Leaves Falling on Lisbon’ could be a contemporary Romany interpretation of New Order’s ‘Blue Monday’, while the title track is a smattering of snare drum and freaked-out free-jazz saxophone – the bastard love child of Dave Brubeck, Miles Davis, John Coltrane and a vat full of Owsley acid.

‘Through the Garden of St John’s Wort’ kicks straight in with a pounding beat and mesmerising intensity and ‘Serpent Bites the Young Lion’ lives and breathes on a repetitive melody that’s surrounded and ultimately cannibalised by Pex’s precise drums. Finally, there’s a scratchy reprise of the opening track, this time played out in the guise of an old vinyl turntable playing in a room of a remote rural European house.

This is a record you can listen to again and again, and forever find something new. It’s the dream you have that you can’t work out, but which leaves your mind just that little bit more enlightened, that little less restricted by artificial notions of structure and predictability. It’s a quantum leap from your previous docile perspective, and I reckon there’s few more journeys left in Pex yet.

by Patrick Emery