The EP’s opening cut “Small Talk” is chock full of spring-loaded rhythms and off-kilter synth squiggles, at once recalling the tricky figures of Aphex Twin and Hot Chip’s more left-field excursions; meanwhile, “Spin Wave” finds MADMADMAD stretching their limbs into Chemical Brothers’ territory, with a Bollywood-infused guitar riff, a haunting bass line, and the type of laser-focused chaos that causes dancefloors to practically erupt in flames.

Then there’s the first single “Run”—which features Rachel Kenedy on vocals and has a satisfyingly rude and minimalistic feel, nodding at Tom Tom Club and not unlike something you’d hear from legendary Berlin producer Ellen Allien’s bPitch Control label. Lyrically, the song represents what the band describe as “the feeling of walking the hamster wheel that is the day-to-day rat race,” and the general notion of perpetual, involuntary motion played a role in the EP’s creation.  

Listening to MADMADMAD can be delightfully disorienting, and that quality extends to the band’s collagist and homemade visual art that accompanies their music. “History goes in cycles, and we feel there’s a correlation with what happened a century ago, when everything was so chaotic and people had a hard time making sense of what was going on in the world,” Benji explains while describing how the band take cues from the 20th century’s Dadaist movement. “It feels like we’re at that moment again—where it’s quite hard to make sense of everything with so much information every day. There was quite a lot of confusion back then after the first world war and a global pandemic, and the response of the arts was to reflect the nonsensical place the world was at. We feel heavily influenced by that, so that’s what we put in our music and visuals.”

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