The Word April 2007 www.wordmagazine.co.uk

I'm not entirely sure why it is, but I tend to like bands who clearly couldn't exist without the Pet Shop Boys (Junior Boys, Lorraine, um, Trademark) without actually being that keen on the originals. This undoubtedly highlights some yawning great flaw in my personality, but Raise the Stakes isn't going to be the record to end it. For a start there are the songs, Toe The Line and Come To Love are great, but Stuck In A Rut sounds like it's been recorded straight from a mangled Boots C60 they found in the back of their mum's Austin Maxi. And they're so deadpan I fear for the health of their kitchen implements. How Times Change appears to have been put together on a home computer of the Sinclair stripe. It's a minute long. Self Pity lasts 90 seconds. Hello, are you my new favorite band?

Rob Fitzpatrick

Gay Times Issue 343 April 2007 www.gaytimes.co.uk

After their (largely ignored) Trademark Want More, it wasn't difficult to raise the stakes. But they've done it, pushing tempos, beats and buttons. They've neatly synthesised Fischerspooner and the Postal Service without loosing their whiff of British bedroom band. They're still a pub-Rock Petshop Boys and, before you know it, there will be a 'Nu-Romantics' revolution. Apart from some misguided epic orchestration - more Wham than Wagner - this is a fine Electro-Pop album by lovable, roguish underdogs. But it probably won't be bothering Tesco's shelves any time soon.

Guardian Unlimited Friday 9th March 2007 www.guardian.co.uk

Hometown: Oxford.

The lineup: Oliver Horton (synths, laptop, vocals), Stuart Meads (synths, laptop, backing vocals), Paul Soulsby (synths, laptop, FX).

The background: Trademark aren't like Ladytron or Adult. or one of those other new-fangled electroclash combos who offer a modern take on synthpop, paying homage to it but essentially moving the music forward. In fact, listen to Trademark and you'd think you were back in 1981, when scarily coiffed futurists roamed the streets and the icy plink-plonk of Messrs Yamaha and Casio ruled the waves.Actually, the Trademark boys did spend 1981 sporting funny haircuts and making squelching noises, but that's probably because Stuart was two years old, while his cousin Oli was a foetus. Still, they developed fast: by 1988, they'd formed a "band" called Technobeat and penned an album's worth of tunes called Stereo.

Six years later, the pair, who obviously hadn't even heard of the Pet Shop Boys, became Trademark. Over the next four years, they wrote five albums, although only close friends and family have heard them (and even they had to be heavily sedated). The 1998 one, Obscure, was fairly appositely (not to mention PSB-ishly) titled: apparently, six copies were sold via the Internet, one to a girl in Italy. Or maybe it was a geezer. Hard to tell with Italian names.

By the turn of the century, Trademark stopped being a synth duo like Yazoo and became an electro trio like Yello, drafting in Soulsby. Their next album, Audiologue, sold a few more copies than its predecessors and contained early versions of current Trademark staples. Highlights of the ensuing half-decade include a Pop CD of the Week in the Times for 2004's Trademark Want More, and a nationwide tour supporting The Human League. Throughout 2005 and 2006, Trademark took their melodic electronic pop plus blank Oakey-does-Iggy basso profundo vocals on the road and worked on what will be their first widely promoted album, Raise The Stakes. Start, er, feeling fascination, or something.

The buzz: "Come To Love is a stupendously-chorused pop stormer which sounds like the Pet Shop Boys and OMD knocking back Smirnoff Ices down the DIY electropop disco."

The truth: They're calling it "the epitome of 21st Century pop"; problem is, The Human League et al were doing 21st Century pop 26 years ago, and this doesn't really take it to the next level - say, the 22nd Century.

Most likely to: Get the thumbs up from Pop Justice and Pop Bitch.

Least likely to: Have a Number 1 with a song called Don't You Want My Tainted Love.

File next to: The Human League, Pet Shop Boys, The Beloved, Fierce Girl.

What to buy: The single Come To Love is released by Truck Records on April 16, with the album Raise The Stakes to follow on April 23.

Paul Lester

Tasty July 2004 www.tastyfanzine.org.uk

Trademark are adamant that they make pop music, and on the evidence of ‘Want More’, I’m not gonna argue with them. There seems to be quite a lot of good music coming out of Oxford at the moment, but Trademark have set themselves apart somewhat by pushing out a brand of early neo-80s synth pop. First track ‘My Life in Stereo’ is far too muscular and Mode-esque for my liking, but second one, ‘Sine Love’ shimmers like a great New Order track, say, like off ‘Power, Corruption & Lies’. ‘Square Wave Anger’ is industrial-lite, and so it goes throughout the rest of ‘Want More’. However, underpinning everything is a definite effort to make great big bloody POP! music. Not for them a piano-led dirge, or even anything approaching an epic. Nope, Trademark want it hard, fast and sweet. And so should you. Oh, and they do the best line in badges. You must get one.

Sam Metcalf

Rock Sound Issue 62 www.rock-sound.net

Funny not long before sticking this in the CD player I was indulging a rare urge to listen to Soft Cell. Trademark certainly seam to be aproaching music from the same seedy back-alley as sex dwarfs Marc Almond and Dave Ball, seducing with jism-stained promises of depravity and delight before louchely tossing it aside (only to bemoan it's loss). Apart from sharing a similarly sordid electro sound, the duo also share a lovelorn soulfulness with their forbears that helps round out their character somewhat - 'Sine Love' for instance is a lovely synth ballad with a heartbreakingly plantive delivery that'll have wannabe numanoids weaping into their Wasps. The Kitsch element here may put off those seeking 'Authenticity' from their alt-pop, but Trademark are deeply superficial rather than superficially deep. You dig?

Joe Stannard

BBC Oxford June 2003 www.bbc.co.uk/oxford/music

Trademark are billed as electro pop which worries me slightly. However, from the moment three guys in lab coats with fairy-light lit arms appear, something tells me this will be far from the pale Duran Duran imitators I was expecting.

Two of them hide themselves behind banks of keyboards and kick off with a tune welcoming us to their weird and wonderful world. Luke Smith performs at a previous concert. Coupling the ice cold coolness of Kraftwerk with the vocal mannerisms of Neil Tennant, the songs glide and stutter in an effortless way. Trademark is also probably the only band who could do a lecture on sound waves mid-set and get away with it. Informative as well as entertaining!

Nightshift May 2004 www.nightshift.oxfordmusic.net

Back in the early 80s, electronic music it was quite the purest form of pop, with The Human League, Depeche Mode and, later on The Pet Shop Boys painting pristine pictures of a silicon future. Ocford trio Trademark, though varley out of their teens, are part of a growing movement of bands inspired by that time, stripping back the layers of confusion and cross-pollination that have built up around electronic music over the decades.

"Want More" is Trademark's debut and they start awkwardly, their transistors obviously not warmed up yet, with the Pet Shop Biys rip-off "My Life In Stereo". but Sine Love finds man and machine in closer harmony, a sci-fi lullaby riding on the hum and chatter of gentle machinary, sharing a solemn, poetic mood if not musical style with those other Truck favourites, Tompaulin.

Trademark are at their most effiecient (hey they are androids after all, or at least they want us to think as much), when they let the old-school synth sounds bubble up around the I. Am. A. Robot vocals, like on "Square Wave Anger", injecting a rare moment of rage into proceedings, sounding a lot like forgotten synth hero Fad Gadget. Of course, they stretch all this technobabble too far across the album, with metaphorical cliches like "I directly interface with your heart", when what they really mean is, "I want to give you a good seeing to, Mrs Lady Robot". But then, so much of the very best synth-pop was equally stilted and pretentious. Check out the first two Human League albums) a huge infulence by the sounds of it) to see just how much you can get away with when you cast off the "keep it real" restraining belt of rock and roll.

Furthur into the album there are unbashed steals from Depeche Mode (notably "Personal Jesus" on "All Too Late"). OMD (particually vocally) and Silicon Teens (oh go on, search them our people, you will love us and thank us forever when you hear them). They save the best till last, though: "Triangle Indifference" with it's vocoder vocals and blink-and-you'll-miss-them snatches of John Foxx's "20th Century" and Human League's "The Things That Dreams Are Made Of".

Perhaps too soft-focus and lightweight to stand up against the modern synth-pop champions likes of Ladytron or Nemo, Trademark, though, are a timely reminder that the future seamed more appealing when we thought it was going to be all bacofoil miniskirts and antiseptic glass domes. Bleep and, in a very real sense, bloop.

David Kattack