Tag: psych

TRACK | Cotton Jones – Blood Red Sentimental Blues

5/5 golden merles

Michael Nau and Whitney McGraw have always had a great sense of production, properly documenting the smoke in the air, the curving and crashing that elevates the storytelling. This is still firmly in that tradition but a bit bigger.

When they gradually grew away from the charmed lo-fi folk of Page France, the goal seems to be to create a warm ambiance of fertile soil in which to grow their melodies.

“Blood Red Sentimental Blues” would work as a title alone. But there’s a lot more to it than that. The organ cements the foundation of the thing. The dual vocals route a pincer maneuver on the heart. When the tambourine track clicks the drum into a richer stereo around 1:23, all of this gets more tactile. It is eminently lovely stuff.

TRACK | Prison Affair – Nice Guys

5/5 golden merles

Spanish lo-fi texture god-ghouls, Prison Affair return with Demo III, a slick and bountiful repeater. Top tier sludge and melody worship, it is both sickly and perpetually fun.

The aesthetic sense is something akin to reliably nailing Jell-O/jelly/ectoplasm to the wall; take your pick. Hard to quantify and deceptively simple, spatially ingenious, modestly amuck stuff.

The excited and concurrent release among the lo dash fi pipeline was impressive, dropping last month across Tremendo Garaje, Harakiri Diat, and tagoschlucam, among others, to much outpouring of love. They are highly consistent and rightfully flourishing, short and detailed tracks hyper focused on quality over quantity yet regularly uploading great sets of EPs/demos.

TRACK | Dinero Romero – Laser Beam of Consciousness

5/5 golden merles

“Laser Beam of Consciousness” from Louisville’s Dinero Romero was a central piece of the last mix. With much warmth and warbling, the track is a kind of psych rock which evolves like a placid fever dream, methodical and yet genial in its delirium.

The song in no way begins to address the question of whether it’s performers are… “either people dressed in regalia to look like spirits, or they are spirits.” It’s anybody’s guess. But they are employed, with heads filled with fog and in a stupor on the trip home. A nice, dreamy track concerning how you spend your time and to what do you devote the few brief moments of coherent focus.

It can be bought for an increasingly devalued buck.

TRACK | The Numerators – Dead

5/5 golden merles

“Dead” is Psych-Surf circa 2013. With a loping start that builds into a veritable gallop, the essential elements of the genre are soon assembled into a, to mix the metaphors, well-earned avalanche. Why didn’t I just say stampede, hm? No.

A little hard to place in the homestead: maybe equal parts garage and bedroom. It features a bit of the grit and pulp of either.

Full of texture and heart in a way that resonates with my cultural conditioning, the track reverberates in the manner only matter can seem to muster. By which, to add to the confusion, I mean energy condensed to a relatively slow vibration. But, fortunately, its output is one within the audible range of our lowly species, the decline of which the song itself laments and celebrates in equal measure.

When it pours from the speakers there is a comforting nuance to the noise, the distinction a product of tens of thousands of hours you and I have spent consuming similar external stimuli. And within all that experience, narrowing and selecting, “Dead” is plotted within the very narrow percentage of what I arbitrarily consider to be Good. Credulously, gullibly, naïvely I take it to be an earnest testament. And if it isn’t, so what?

TRACK | Samuel Campoli – One Eye

5/5 golden merles

Samuel Campoli’s “One Eye” is a delicate and multidimensional track, something who’s size is difficult to assess. It is a kind of glittering aura phasing through a rift seen from great distance.

Parts psych-folk and freak-folk, there is within it an array of quasi-familiar attributes positioned on a foundation of vibration. The concerted warble feels equal parts ornate and obliterated.

Still, the sway has a good sense of purpose to it and in this weaving course we are united. When the drums pick up the ponderous becomes quietly devastating. The feeling reminds me of a quote from Tarkovsky’s “Stalker”:

For softness is great and strength is worthless. When a man is born, he is soft and pliable. When he dies, he is strong and hard. When a tree grows, it is soft and pliable. But when it’s dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death’s companions. Flexibility and softness are the embodiment of life. That which has become hard shall not triumph.

Glacial and gracious, it can be purchased here.

TRACK | Filthy Huns – Fake Ass Muthas

5/5 golden merles

In quick summation: From LA, released on the indomitable Not Not Fun, two albums removed from the common era.

“Fake Ass Muthas” is likely the first and last eight and a half minute track posted to this platform, so don’t get any ideas you epic/jam band freaks. But also take note, this is how you collapse time into a malleable unit.

Wonderous and empirically strange, the pacing and texture of this instance is something to hold up as an idol. Some kind of masterclass (…if that phrasing wasn’t recently besmirched by capital). But that isn’t without its risk. Just because it can be admired doesn’t mean it can be replicated or the right lessons learned or applied.

How does the orbit not collapse or dull around that digi drum over the prolonged runtime? How is anything ever in a stable state or find a form of homeostasis? It is an adaptive system which draws on ample resources and manages to remain inventive despite the glut.

The track always manages to tire of itself moments before the listener might and appropriately reinvent or contort the structure. One melody is relieved of duty and a well-textured instrument is replaced by a complimentary but stark alternate. Sounds simple. Isn’t.