Artist: Psychal
Title: Transmissions
Type: Album
Label: Digital
Ok I accept no responsibility for this. There, said it. This was sent via a Bandcamp code with a very short email, thanking me for ‘showing the good stuff out there’ and offering some ‘sonic waves you might want to tune in’. No social media accounts I could find, no ID, no nothing.
Though having listened to this numerous times maybe that’s as well… See that cover art? Well the music is a little less comprehensible. Kind of.
‘All The Time (They Keep On Happening)’ bleeps in with morse code of something and random interference fro radio stations… slowly the buzzing increases, an almost subliminal slow synth sound…a voice, weird and unsettling repeating they keep on happening…Drums come in, then a thick bass, then a riff of sorts. There is almost a tune here, something discordant, at right angles to the riff as though its playing on nursery instruments somewhere down the hall. It’s jazz played by lunatics locked in their own little world happy as can be but the riff fuzzed out punk style but oddly smothered has a real drive and a curious, eerie groove. The vocals such that they are, are as derranged as the rest. We get get a meandering riff, a circle of odd note progressions and the inevitable final collapse.
It’s all kinds of fucked up, impenetrable but weirdly playful somehow too… if it doesn’t disturb you that is.
‘Sterile Mental Army’ creeps slowly up behind you. It’s like your radio has gone wrong, or is possessed or has found a wavelength that doesn’t actually exist. Blown out bass, nattering squeaky vocals somewhere behind that crappy speaker. I think the dust bunnies behind the radiator have started talking to me… I feel compelled to listen but I have no a single clue as to what they are saying. ‘Laughing On Our Own’ finds a little piano run and promptly drowns it under smoky late night jazz mumblings and more intrusive radio pickups. And then the dance begins; imagine the Butthole Surfers turned down and smeared in soft noise and forced through a mono speaker. Acid jazz punk that lost the plot somewhere under the debris of the collapsed walls of sanity.
The worst thing is it is kinda so very, very catchy indeed. Despite there being no normal tune. Compelling? Yeah that’s a better word. Hypnotic. Constantly tugging at your mind.
‘While Might Thoughts Sound Tiny’ buzzes with extraterrestrial mutterings but get shoved aside by the interference and so start a formless jazz punk party. No I have no idea what is going on. Music to sit alone in the remnants of your house to and let the waves of madness broadcast freely through the peeling plasterwork. ‘Candy Like Pain’ re-establishes the signal to the mothership. Briefly. Before being sent on it’s happy little way back into the jittering acid punk jazz pool. Is this candy that tastes like pain or does Candy like pain? Who knows? Candy probably. Hello Candy! They seems weirdly happy anyway. We even get a clear bassline for a while too…
‘Distant Voices Carry On’ filters out all that bounce and a darker sound seeps in through the waterpipes and a disturbing voice rattles and mumbles and says things I’m glad I can’t hear somehow. I keep expecting it to hiss things…viral… but it never does instead stepping into a gothic tinged Scooby Do world but more sinister. The clearest vocals so far, almost daring to be identified but I refuse as the music almost snaps and retreates and lunges once more from amidst the distortion.
‘Last Transmission (Lost Frequency)’ digs into the low frequencies as a goodbye. Bubbling bass echoing through a tunnel somewhere. Tinny, precise and persistent drums, swirling distortion and the clang of an 80s style post punk goth guitar coming in almost on another wavelength before all fades back into the beeping morse sounds and watery wavelength. Back from whence it came.
Nope, not a clue what this is, where it came from or if it will ever return but there is something deeply, strangely so compelling in it. Parts genuinely sound playful but completely unhinged. More inviting that sinister but also with the feint layer of disturbed transmissions from somewhere.
Acid jazz punk noise from the depths of your 1940s valve radio and 1950s haunted speaker full of aliens babbling something that could be the end of the world or a grocery list. Or maybe it’s just a party you’re invited to but something got lost in translation. Or they are coming to get you and do something nasty.
Could be anything but this is inexplicably… compelling. I think.
Gizmo
