[Ended] WIN TIX to PSYCHIC ILLS @ The Crocodile in Seattle
February 26, 2013 in Contests, Music, With Video
Do you know that feeling where your head is slowly being coated in paraffin wax, and your bones are folding up like the accordion lens on a vintage folding pack Polaroid land camera, as the room fills up with the uppermost foam-like layer of a Jello 1-2-3 parfait? Well, whether you do or not, if that sounds like an experience that you might be able to get behind, you should probably drag your ass down to a Psychic Ills show the next time that they come through your town. [Hot tip: they're currently touring.] Although they really cracked through the surface with their 2006 debut full-length, DINS (Social Registry), 2013 marks the 10 year anniversary since the New York psych outfit was first assembled. Over that time period, their brand of spaced-out muscle-relaxer psychedelia has mutated between pneumatic wormhole Tesla coil teleportation rides, extracting and liquifying skeletons like anti-matter tractor beams, to inverted neon quicksand desert haze rock, and a variation of the between.
Recent years have found them being labeled as “more accessible,” with some of the material that they have released, referred to as their “singles” by some (whatever they’ve made a video for), tendeding to reveal more structured Brian Jonestown Massacre-style leanings, as opposed to straight up aura exfoliating, sternum pelting sonic light. If the jangly guitar with a morphine habit vibe is your bag, that’s awesome, but don’t be fooled friends; the swirling dimensional shifting chaos has in no way been abandoned. I caught Psychic Ills a couple of years ago at the Funhouse here in Seattle–it was during their tour with Texas noise goblins, Indian Jewelry– and these guys were pumping out the type of wild, mind-twisting lunacy that completely transformed the now-defunct little dive club into an opium den from a Roger Dean painting. The way that they move sound around is somewhat disorienting, but in a manner that is, simultaneously, oddly inviting, as if the music is the only thing that makes any sense and the rest of the physical environment doesn’t belong there. The entire structural framework falls away and the crowd is elevated, floating off like Glenda in a DMT smoke bubble. Expansive, drawn-out reverberating guitars push off and take warbling flight like a hang glider assembled out of javelins, before slowly dissipating away like invisible ink. Light, distant, hearing-test blips float up like seltzer bubbles through velour blankets of sound that are being pulled along like a conveyor belt on ectoplasm. But, the calls are coming from within the house, or rather, the oscillation is coming from within the housing of your dome piece. It’s vibrating your skull at the same frequency as a Tibetan singing bowl and the sound rings are creating a vortex that everything is being channeled in through. In other words… shit gets weird, but it’s bound to affect the way you digest things when you’re breathing sound.
Psychic Ills will be coming back through Seattle this Monday, March 4th in support of their new Neil Michael Hagerty (Royal Trux, Howling Hex) produced full-length, One Track Mind (Sacred Bones) to perform with the likes of Folkazoid and Kingdom of the Holy Sun. Wanna see them for free? Fair enough. Thanks to our pals at The Crocodile, we have a pair of tickets to give to one of youz clowns right now. Read the rest of this entry →
I’ve both mentioned it and mentioned how I’ve mentioned it before, but when 40 year old legendary cult musician/outside artist, Wesley Willis passed away 10 years ago from complications with Leukemia, it was the first, and possibly last, time that I ever actually felt anything from the death of a public figure. I had only met him once, but there was a pit in my stomach for the loss of someone that I felt like I had known well; someone who had been an important part of my life since high school. He was an amazing character and the fact that I was able to personally speak with him and “bump” his head before it was all too late is an experience that I will cherish until my own time eventually comes in 2046 as a casualty of the inevitable robot uprising. Here at Monster Fresh we love Wesley Willis. In fact, I have one of his giant original hand-drawn Chicago cityscapes hung over my infant son’s crib right now, influencing his delicate impressionable subconscious. Yeah, I love Wesley and, while his legacy has continued to grow, to some degree, since his untimely demise–not unlike that of comedian 
