Mark Mallman, famed for his exciting live shows, plays a keyboard that might as well be an electric guitar.

Mallman said his live shows display his wild side and get the crowd involved.
“My album is almost like a blueprint for a really crazy insane asylum,” he said. “You can map out and build an insane asylum, but it doesn’t really become anything until you put the people in it.”

The Minneapolis native has toured the country 23 times and opened for bands like Of Montreal, Donovan, and Cat Power, according to his Web site.

Mallman will stop at Burt’s Tiki Lounge on Monday to perform songs from his new album Invincible Criminal.

Mallman said his music fuses 70s and 80s rock-inspired tunes that have a pop-rock feel to them and incorporate qualities of Arcade Fire and David Bowie.
Mallman said he also composes music for movies.

He worked on music for the trailers of major motion pictures “10,000 B.C.” and “Wall-E.” He’s also composed the musical scores of feature-length films including “Living Arrangements” and “The Curse of the Demon.”

Mallman said the greatest source of his musical inspiration is his previous album,
The Audio Book, a parody of the novella The Metamorphosis. It incorporates existentialist and absurdist philosophy, he said.

His newest album is less deep and more about partying, causing chaos, and pretending to rob banks, Mallman said.

Mallman said he is serious about recording and writing songs, but when he goes on stage, a different person takes over.

“When I’m on stage I go crazy and don’t have to hide it anymore,” he said.
Mallman’s drummer Aaron Lemay said their live shows always bring out fans who want to listen to some funky new music.

“The live show is so much different than the record,” Lemay said. “The live show is more chaos, the record is more structured. Anything goes on stage.”

The album incorporates the synthesizer to produce poppy, retro sounds that are reminiscent of the 80s, Mallman said.

“I’m on this vision quest to write the greatest pop songs I can, but it’s not Top 40,” he said. “What I do is an experiment.”

*Mark Mallman
Burt’s Tiki Lounge
313 Gold Ave. SW
Monday, Oct. 5
8 p.m. *