We belive the pMad is a young, new group with a significant amount of potential. However, as they sound now, to us they have an inescapable fatal flaw. If you’ve read my reviews you know there’s one thing I hate above all else; auto-tuned vocals. It’s what separates the production I hate from the 21st century from the music I love, most of which is from the 20th century. There’s an easy way to remedy this, however. And that’s to use vocals that are only affected with twentieth century effects and/or pedals.

Otherwise, you’re going to get that garbage Kanye West (and every other pop singer from the last 25 years) pitch corrected sound. Which means you sound like a robot. In a way it levels the playing field because anyone can SOUND like they can sing and are on key using this and other digital effects. But to me, in a more important way, it homogenizes everyone. And as if the use of AI to create whole songs and albums on platforms like Spotify where they often go unnoticed wasn’t bad enough, vocalists like pMad’s make themselves sound like robots thereby pre-eliminating their individuality and humanity.

Other than that, pMad is what it advertises to a degree. The sounds are informed by the post-punk/early Goth genres of the late seventies and early eighties. Another respect in which pMad differs, however, in another way I don’t like, reminds me of the scene in 24 hour party people where the narrator indicates “something equally epoch making is happening…They’re applauding the DJ. Not the music, not the musician, not the creator, but the medium.” pMad fits better into this epoch of New Order than that of Joy Division. Their songs are remixed. They utilize the designs of other artists for rhythm tracks –which makes it confusing as to who I’m actually listening to and reviewing — the “Trust Devoured” ep features two other artists, in what pMad calls “a boundary-pushing collaboration alongside UK/USA’s Lunar Paths and Australia’s Killtoys — a unique musical venture that brings together 3 artists from across the world to create something greater than the sum of its parts.”

We know there’s supposed to be a degree of talking up the music on the record in press kits and oftentimes a label or marketing agency writes it as opposed to the artist themself. However, in all the materials sent to us they mention this “Exquisite Corpses” (which if they were to do it correctly i.e. by the ‘Exquisite Corpse’ member of the Zurich dada collective very early in the twentieth century they’d have one word from one artist followed by another word that’s blind to the first word from the second and so on, or at least alternating lyrical lines) project several times as if it’s the Bees Tits. And it all comes off as, well, pretentious. As do the lyrics in general which are not, disappointingly, abstract, conceptual, or Dadaist in any way shape or readymade. They’re more like a teenager’s journal of despair. It’s possible they’re very young, it’s likely that their band is very new anyway.

Hopefully they won’t take criticisms like these to the detriment of their ‘souls’ (we’ve always wondered what it’s like to have one of those) but will rather use them as an opportunity to see where they could improve AND where they draw the line and say “Times Boredom’s critics SUCK and they’re all wrong about the vocals!” (it’d be nice if they’d get mad instead of just continuously sing speaking the same downbeat melody over and over — it’s almost as if they need all the digital effects they’re using to make the vocals stand out and be entertaining…)

We honestly didn’t want this review to be dumping on them as much as we clearly have (sorry), because the music’s really not bad. It’s actually pretty enjoyable in the drone heavy style of unemotional depressing tunes. The best parts of pMad are those that remind us of Joy Division and early The Cure. It’s quite possible that if the vocals made less use of digital effects (you can hear a little less on ‘Closer’ — it sounds like it might be a direct reference but it is indeed meant to be CLOS – ER, not CLOSER as the 2nd and final Joy Division album cleverly is), the single and the ep would be far more enjoyable. It’s not necessarily or undeniably bad to use digital effects and make yourself sound ‘closer’ and ‘closer’ to a robot, it’s just something that I personally don’t like. It can ruin what would otherwise be a pretty good tribute to early post-punk and goth… and for me, it has.

Not to mention the marketing on their website rubs we noncommercial not for profit democratic socialists all wrong. Having merch is one thing. Having beautiful people models display the wearable merch? And all the emphasis on the logo and branding — just no. Not for us. No.

Hence if it sounds like dumping. I apologize; but I really can’t stand vocals that are affected in this machine like way to the degree that they are. I can’t get past it. I hear the tunes underneath and somewhat enjoy them, but the overaffected vocals are a near constant presence on both the “Chance” single (another collaboration with a different artist Think- Marco Menazzi — again, how much of this is pMad and how much the other people?) and the “Trust Devoured” ep.

Perhaps it’d be useful to constructively delve further into the Chance single. The tune and the energy are great, jaunty even where the ep is far more droney and dark. However, due to pMad’s insistence on collaborating with one or multiple artists on all of their tracks, we don’t know how much of this is pMad and how much is Think — it stands out as a very different track then the ep which leads us to believe the other artists are writing more of the basic songs then one would think since the pMad name is clearly stamped (and sent) first.

-A ‘collaboration’ between Scott Koenig and artists/procurators xxStevexx, Keith, Kasreal, and Jessica