Featuring a 12-string Rickenbacker guitar sound reminiscent of The Church, and with early Tim Mortimer songs inspired by REM and the Rain Parade, the band gained popularity on Adelaide community radio station Triple M (now 3D Radio) with a locally recorded demo, "Joy in Despair", before expanding their sound to embrace the new effects-laden bands coming from England’s Creation Records.
Also in ’91, a re-recorded "Dream So Hard" appeared on the rooArt Youngblood III compilation, alongside Underground Lovers, Ripe and Glide, and the band played national youth radio network Triple J’s Live at the Wireless after winning the "J Sessions" (the nineties equivalent of Unearthed).
[1] In 1992, having been Adelaide’s "next big thing" since their inception, the Mandelbrot Set signed to Sydney label Ra Records and released a 7-song EP, A Place Called Kansas.
Unfortunately the songs the label chose to record were by then out of date, did not reflect the band’s live sound and were over-familiar to a fanbase which, in many cases, preferred the original demos.
[2] A second EP, The Mandelbrot Set, followed, wherein Tim Mortimer took centre stage, programming the bulk of the arrangements on an early digital sampler and embracing influences from New Order to the Jesus and Mary Chain.