skinny wolves
Well-Known Member
Psychic Ills, from New York City play Dublin, Friday 3rd November!!!
http://www.myspace.com/psychicills
Download:
Another Day Another Night [from the Dins LP]
4AM [from the Mental Violence II 12"]
January Rain [from the Dins LP]
Killers
They have be likened to My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3, Hawkwind, Galaxie 500, Can, The Fall, Section 25, Jesus & Mary Chain, Sonic Youth etc... and have releases on The Social Registry (Gang Gang Dance, Blood on The Wall, etc...)
Here is a review of their Dins LP
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Psychic Ills are a Brooklyn four piece who bring Spacemen 3's psych & space rock into the New York back alleys and dirty it up with some solid tribal, no-wave rhythms circa early Sonic Youth. Sonic Boom never gave a second thought to drums - often there was just a steady, small drum machine, sometimes there was just a big cloud of guitars with nothing there to pin it down. Psychic Ills' drummer is a centerpiece, always there keeping momentum going forward, pulling the song back together, keeping the guitars from drifting too far away. The band's first full length, Dins, combines four songs with four more abstract collages. The songs are outright amazing. Derivative, probably, but a big, dreamy sound with long brushstrokes and soft, bright washes of distortion. When "Electric Life" finally comes together, it creates this undeniable chug, drums and guitar locked together, pushing forward underneath a cloud of haze, keyboard vamps interjecting, just like honey. "I Knew My Name" and "Another Day Another Night" are equally breathtaking. The former matches disparate elements of a harsh military march beat and thrashing guitars with soft, highly-processed male vocals. The latter takes its guitar sound right out of Loveless, but no surprise, that huge sound exhibits equal grandeur and drama in 2005 as it did in 1991. The more amorphous pieces that flow between the "actual" songs are well done too. "Untitled" and "Inauration" are slow builds to pick up intensity before the steady guitar chug starts again, the former creating harsher metallic tones and the latter basing itself on a circular riff that grows in intensity that drops off into "I Knew My Name"'s quiet, drum-forward intro. Hand drums and Macha-esque guitar melody open the album with "East," which make me think that the band might be just as strong pared down as it is in its huge sound glory. The whole album just flows together well, one big forty minute piece of space-based exploration and improvisation with pop songs popping up inbetween the gaps. There's still a lot of gold to be mined from these sounds (why else would people have waited so long for Shields to follow up Loveless), and Psychic Ills may have the best chance of creating something new out of it, at least while still following the form of a rock band. - fakejazz.com
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Imagine Terry Riley forming a rock band.
Social Registry
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Soon to be a staple for fans of Can, Terry Riley, 13th Floor Elevators, Red Crayola, and other forward thinking individuals.
insound
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A fine sound, a young sound, a sound you should get to know today.
Byron Coley The Wire
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Psychic Ills is a relatively new quartet from New York developing an indie rock hybrid of Confusion Is Sex-era Sonic Youth (the shattered rhythms and screaming feedback), throbbing psychedelia à la Spacemen 3 and My Bloody Valentine, ghostly reverb-soaked post-punk (Joy Division, Section 25), and Eno's glassy synth-generated ambient textures.
San Francisco Weekly
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Incorporating space rock, psychedelica, and drone with the ferocious rhythms of punk rock, Psychic Ills are the rare band that is as experimental as they are explosive. While their dark electronics can sometimes fall into the "spooky" genre (spooky = silly sometimes), these guys make up for it when they let their guitars rip.
oh my rockness
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Psychic Ills start out playing snakey, woozy reverbed drug-groove shit, but their space-rock excursions usually eventually turn into actual songs, which basically means they sound like Spiritualized. The singer is a handsome skinny kid with hair in his face who sings in a fey little whisper, buried in the mix, which also means they sound like Spiritualized. But they don't quite always sound like Spiritualized because Spiritualized doesn't have an amazing rhythm section, a low, heavy stomp that sometimes sounds almost tribal and always anchors the two guitarists' gentle feedback spins. So yeah, I like this band too.
Village Voice
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This is some great spacey rock! Something so confident and seamless about these songs and their delivery. There is this great ability to be spaced out and rock out all at once. Like they are channeling the legacy of Spacemen 3, Psychic Ills have made one of the most striking and satisfying guitar centered records of this young year. I love how they take from both the forefathers of psych as well as the seductive and slightly drugged out sounds of post-punk luminaries like Joy Division and Psycho Candy era Jesus & Mary Chain. The record has not one lull or weak moment. Songs flow right into each other. Whether they are swaying back and forth with a late night ease or turning up and blasting out bleached out melodies; they get it right with every twist and turn the record offers. I would love to see them tour with The Gris Gris as they both take a slightly different approach to psychedelic rock but share a level of excellence that's pretty hard to come by. Highly recommended!
Aquarius Records
