psychedelic
Psych Insight: 20 Essential Psych Albums 2015
Following the overwhelming feedback from last year’s Psych Insight ‘Essential Psych‘ list, Adam Harmsworth of Drone Rock Records and myself have embarked on the mammoth task of getting a list together for 2015. Once again it has been hugely difficult to settle on a final 20 albums which are a reflection and representative of the amount of quality …
Live Review: Boogarins, Reflektor Club, Liege 01.11.2015
I spoke briefly to Rapha, the bass player of Boogarins after the gig, only long enough to ask him to describe their music in a few words if possible. He replied “Free Jazz Pop Rock”. It’s as good a phrase as any, but I would be doing a poor job, and the band a disservice …
Say Psych: Album Review – Take A Lover by Early Mammal
If you like dirty low down psychedelic blues rock then I would suggest that you are going to love this third album by Early Mammal, on the ever reliable Riot Season Records. Early Mammal seem to have adopted that sort of no holds barred psychedelic blues rock aesthetic that at the same time puts a …
Say Psych: Album Review, Frid by Hills
Hills are one of my favourite bands, and the 2011 album ‘Master Sleeps’ is one of my most played. I love the coming together of dance rhythms with drone and a healthy dose of reverb, a heady mixture that I find myself lost in again and again. However, on first playing the new album ‘Frid’ …
Track: The High Learys – Letters to Alice
There’s a fresh blast of warm wind coming in from the west coast of Australia to melt the polar ice caps forming around Sydney Harbour (still recovering from the recent lightning visit of Backseat Mafia’s esteemed editor-in-chief). It’s name is The High Learys, and never has there been a more beautiful sound to leaven the …
Say Psych: Album Review – Heaven by Sundays and Cybele
I first came across Sundays and Cybele earlier this year when I heard the 2012 album release ‘Gypsy House’, which had just come out on vinyl on the brilliant Tokyo label GuruGuru Brain. If you are in any doubt about this check out the label’s Japanese Psych Compilation ‘GuruGuru Brainwash‘ which is a fantastically eclectic …
Psych Insight: Track: Milarepa by Hills, plus debut album reissue news
Hills are one of my favourite bands of recent times, a Swedish collective who only seem to emerge from time to time, but when they do they always seem to leave a big impression on me. Their last album, ‘Master Sleeps’ (their second), was originally released by in 2011 and re-pressed on vinyl by Rocket Recordings …
Psych Insight: News – Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia 2015 line up
It is around about this time of year that my thoughts begin to turn to the Liverpool PsychFest, being held in the hugely atmospheric Baltic Triangle a stone’s throw away from the old Liverpool Docklands on 25th and 26th September. Now in its fourth year, the event is very much part of the ‘psych’ scene and, …
Psych Insight: New Music – Open Visions EP by Kobadelta
There is something of the night about Kobadelta, in the way that there is something of the night about The Amazing Snakeheads. The band’s songs are reminiscent of drunken late nights in back alleys where under the haze of darkness and incoherence, they stumble across liminal realities which the band crystallise through their music. I …
Psych Insight: Album Review – Hypnophobia by Jacco Gardner
Well Jacco’s caught me out again. When I first came across his music ahead of the Liverpool PsychFest in 2013 I was fairly unimpressed by what I heard that I didn’t have him on my list to see. I caught him quite by mistake while finding myself in the same room as he was performing, …