With the arrival of Pandemonium’s debut single, “Dalí”, it feels as though someone has cracked open a geode on the studio console and let the crystalline chaos spill out. Billed as “pan-dimensional pirates,” the trio of Maffmatix, Claire Ray, and Charlton Banks deliver a sound that feels both ancient and beamed in from a strange future. It’s built on the sturdy spine of boom-bap, a familiar anchor, but everything else is a shimmering, liquid distortion. The beat provides gravity while the soul, funk, and trip-hop elements float freely, like debris after a very stylish explosion.
The track wrestles with an identity so fragmented it could be a mosaic. We get this image of a “centipede,” a self pulled in a hundred directions, and it immediately reminds me of trying to explain a dream to someone—the logic is fluid, the characters change masks, and you are both the protagonist and a baffled spectator. When the line “Jekyll or Hyde?” lands, it isn’t a tired trope; it’s a genuine, exhausted plea. Which self gets to drive today? This is the sound of a mind sifting through its own internal costume box, unsure if it’s dressing for a tragedy, a comedy, or a heist.
Of course, with a title like “Dalí,” the surrealism is baked in. The entire composition acts like one of his melting clocks, bending a hard-hitting genre into uncanny new shapes. This isn’t a song seeking validation or a slot on a curated playlist; it’s a tangled, honest broadcast about the messy necessity of creation. It’s a track that accepts the “dissonance” and finds a strange peace in the pendulum’s swing from one extreme to the next.
It leaves you with a feeling, not an answer. With their debut album, Back of the Mind, on the horizon, Pandemonium hasn’t just introduced themselves; they’ve presented a beautiful, perplexing riddle. What truth is found when we stop trying to be just one person?
