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Psychic Ills

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Location: New York, NY

Website: http://myspace.com/psychicills

Bio: After spending 2007 exploring various collaborations and personal projects, the group united to record the follow up to their acclaimed debut album Dins in early ... (more) 2008. Mirror Eye, the resulting record, is an altogether heady affair and as its title suggests, a perspective reflection. Through the course of eight tracks, Elizabeth Hart, Jimy Sei Tang, Brian Tamborello and Tres Warren journey through a unique amalgamation of electronic explorations, improvised jamming and various sonic experiments that yield a record at once familiar and otherworldly - and unlike anything happening right now.

Sprawling opener “Mantis” sets the record’s tone with modulating synths and hand drums that give way to a loose groove, terrestrial guitar patterns and shamanic vocals. If you are still around when it rolls into its ending nearly 11 minutes later, its safe to say that you’re on board. Following that, the open-ended trance rock of the second track, ‘Meta’ fades up as if the band has already been jamming on it long before the listener has been let in. It departs in a similar fashion, save for a brief reprise of reversed tape and whatever remnants of the chorus’ “Meta, Meta, Meta” are hanging around in the listener’s head like a contact high. “Sub Synth” is an off-the-cuff synthesizer splice that descends into the improvised space raga of “Eyes Closed.” “I Take You As My Wife Again” continues deeper into the abstract with metallic synths and improvised electronics transitioning into organic percussion and whistles before ultimately arriving at its minimal techno inspired ending. “Fingernail Tea” is the most straight forward song and vaguely harkens back to elements of their previous full-length, Dins. The hallucinatory next track, “The Way Of” is the album’s last burst of energy, forming out of spinning synths and clatter, and riding an eastern bass line and watery guitar riff before unravelling under percussion and goat scream mania. The final track “Go to the radio” is a come down of sorts combining two main processed loops, an electronic tambura with a circular dubbed-out field recording of a man’s voice repeating the song’s name and message, and perhaps the album’s for that matter.

Mirror Eye is the imaginative culmination of a period of exploration for Psychic Ills. A transcendent combination of musics that symbolizes how far the band has and continues to evolve beyond genre - and a fun listen too. This release will be followed by a mini-lp in the winter of other unheard material from this period. (less)