They say everyone is only 6 degrees of separation away from any other given person. The amount of weird connections to people and places we unknowingly make are numerous and far too complex to catalog, but it’s often brought to the forefront of our mind when something from the background of our past suddenly catches up to our present. In that way, I have been 6 degrees away from MADI’s catalog for the past 9 years.

MADI has been doing this a long time, and has a voice distinctly recognizable from a number of huge EDM tracks circa 2016. My personal introduction to her would’ve been Virtual Riot’s Flutter and Felix Snow’s Slow, both of which were frequent additions to my 9th grade playlist rotation. So imagine being me and trying to connect the puzzle pieces of why the hell I recognize the voice of this sick experimental pop artist in my release radar about a month back, only to realize THAT’s how I know her? A bygone era where I was deeply invested in EDM? Insanity. Since then I had been conspiring to write a piece for THE ARCHIVE about her 2023 album DYING ANGEL which I’ve completely fallen in love with, but with a new album on the horizon I chose to be patient, and here and now on release day it feels as though that paid off.

backyard ghosts is one big experiment in dark industrial textures, and how far you can push the boundaries of traditional pop and club music formatting. It’s a chaotically eclectic mix of sounds that transports you into experiences ranging from “creepy damp factory inside a cave” to “running down an endless, dimly lit hallways”. While I’m aware that on the surface that could be interpreted as a bad time, I would argue that as an album released on Halloween it’s the duty of any good album to really plunge you into the dark, and this song does that to unparalleled degrees.

Juicy Couture sweat suit is the third track on our (emotionally) dissonant and metallic journey following the intro track and the projects first single, and it’s probably got my favourite energy across the whole project. It’s a track that lays out a vibe of frustrated reflection up front with it’s simple back and fourth synth stabs and autotuned solo vocal combo. Past this it keeps itself relatively simple with the addition of a bouncy bass and a myriad of percussive effects, but it fills out the mix to perfection dragging us along a fast paced lesson on how sometimes you are your only friend to get yourself through hell. I love the way this song plunges you vividly into a lived experience, feeling the rainy days and hurt along the way, as well as the retroactive anger associated with the tests the world has placed in your way. On a slightly nostalgic and incredibly personal (which also means unrelatable) note, the bass patch in this song really reminds me of a preset my father sound designed on Waldorf’s A1 vst synthesizer that I used constantly when I was first beginning to write music. While that last part means literally nothing to anyone reading, I wanted to mention it simply to indulge my own nostalgic urges.

…anyways moving on from hyper-specific anecdotes from my life, 168devius_raging rumination is a completely insane thing to name a song. I love how totally out there it is, and how it’s somehow incredibly fitting for the track that bestows it. Something about this track and it’s fast stuttery drums and vocal washes fills me with a rush, as well as an inexplicable sense of anxiety I can’t quite figure out. There’s not a lot of vocal content here, which means I get to nerd out about sound design guilt free. I’m a sucker for a good wobbly bass line, and this song while not being overbearing absolutely delivers on that front, having the movement of the bass actually feel like the most consistent measure of time we’re given among the erratic synth lead and offset double tracked percussion (which as I write I’m realizing is definitely the source of the anxiety). It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a song that holds itself together by wires and strings this way while keeping itself intact and cohesive the way this song does, with the only parallel I could possibly draw be that this song is like a manic rendition of James Blake’s If The Car Beside You Moves Ahead, which is incredibly high praise.

if i lived in a cottage far away is stark and immediate contrast to the chaos of 168devius_raging rumination. The whiplash from an anxious speedrun to a composition of washy reverbed synths and slapback delay vocals is intense, but purposeful. It’s disarming in the way it suddenly seemingly dissasembles the entire ethos of this project with its maximalist production, replacing it with minimal but massive moments that feel dare I say fragile. To be direct, I love what this song is doing, because it’s painting a picture and feeding you captions in tandem. The instrumental makes you suddenly feel exposed, and the vocals tell us we’re too delicate for this place. Even as the instrumental opens up to its most developed form with grainy background synths and head first drums we’re left feeling wide open for what may hit next. It’s foreboding, and an amazing illustration of the way this album forces you to feel specific things in specific moments seemingly with ease.

As a final highlight, lets talk about chronically ill/online. This track is a clear and transparent look into a story familiar to far too many online personalities, and even just anyone who’s ever touched a keyboard. While bumping a kicky bass line and a backing synth that sounds a LOT like popping bubbles, MADI sings a self reflective piece on the havoc the internet reeks on the mental health of anyone misguided enough to make a TikTok account. With a feed of bad news, the urge to quit, and the remark of how others will enjoy watching your downfall it’s an incredibly raw and real piece painted on a canvas of modern experimental electronic production. While listening to the entirety of backyard ghosts I built up a bit of a tolerance to the eerie or abrasive sounds of the previous tracks, but I sincerely wasn’t prepared to be legitimately kind of bummed out by the horrible chronically online reality this song reminds us we live in. I would far from say that’s a bad thing though. I’m a firm believer that the highest art is meant to evoke emotion of some kind, and this song oozes authenticity in ways nobody could ever fake.

The largest problem with writing about sick as hell industrial inspired experimental projects like this is that it gets so weird that I worry some of my praise comes off as an insult, when in reality I’m absolutely enveloped and fascinated with what the music can evoke. At the beginning of the article I drew comparisons to how this album felt, and for the second point of comparison I originally wrote that the songs could engulf you into what I imagine the feeling of being on a bad trip is like while your friends scream “NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE NIGHTMARE” at you, but decided against the inclusion of that because I didn’t think anyone outside my totally incoherent mind could comprehend that that was a point of praise to the sheer chaos and caustic feelings that flow through the very bones of this project. To be blunt, I think it’s all incredible, from the calm moments of if i lived in a cottage far away, to the anxiety inducing hihats of 168devius_raging rumination, to the sheer damp coldness of 1000 pink balloons (contradictory to what the title would have you believe). This is a project that’s an experience, and if you’ve still got any spooky spirit left over despite this going life the day after Halloween, I cannot recommend it enough.