Psychon "Apocalypse Has Been Dubbed the Weekend Pill" CD
[Scarcelight]
Not bad. This is far more musical and structured than anything else I've heard from the Scarcelight camp to date, blending stuttered percussive beats and glitchy electronics with tactful melodies, faint samples, and an overall chilled out atmosphere that flows quite nicely. The group hails from The Netherlands and uses guitar, synths, piano, percussion, and all sorts of additional instrumentation/sounds to create a vast landscape of shifts and changes with everything from loops and improvisational musical passages to subdued experimental ambience. It's a definite blend of the traditional and the atypical, but it comes across rather creatively, having an odd sense of both atmospheric randomness and soundtrack-ish qualities. "King Backwards" is my favorite track, opening the disc with lots of intricate layering and panning effects and a lot of very beautiful melodic instrumentation that creates a great laidback vibe. Meanwhile "Zoom at the Professors" has some of the most straightforward musicianship, with lots of tangible guitar parts that actually lock up against concrete basslines and drum patterns. "Chairman of the Bored (No Office Necessary)" is the longest piece at nearly 10 minutes, opening with more of a staggered rhythm and an electronic presence, floating over to some reversed guitars over reverberating piano and shuffling textures. "Three Men, a Big Truck and a Piece of Art" is one of the shorter and more abstract pieces, but oddly enough I find the longer and more musical excursions to be more interesting. Something about those pieces flows nicely with a billowy sort of texture that balances the quick back and forth movements and changes surprisingly well. "Alpenkreuzer Emptiness" is among the quieter and more consistent pieces, maintaining a fairly straightforward and lush set of layers that sort of repeat throughout its five minutes of time, bringing in distant basslines to add some flare to the latter half. The 9+ minute "You Get Paid Helping Churches" has some very nice piano melodies and distant sustained notes that have a loose progressive rock tangent on occasion, sort of droning and humming along with a good sense of movement. The layout's pretty minimal but looks great, using scarce text and lots of full-page color photographs that are pretty awesome looking. I really like this material. I can't quite wrap my head around it, and I'd be curious to hear more to get an idea for what their overall approach is like, but this is a very professional sounding piece of work. I'm into it. (7/10)
Running time - 38:39, Tracks: 6
[Notable tracks: King Backwards, You Get Paid Helping Churches]
Scarcelight Recordings - http://www.scarcelight.org

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