| THE COSMIC
DEAD
CD UPC # 666017315720 / LP
UPC # 666017315713
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LIMITED EDITION CD (DIGIPACK SLEEVE 500 COPIES) WHITE VINYL LP (700 COPIES) & SILVER VINYL MAIL ORDER EXCLUSIVE LP (300 COPIES). THESE TWO ORIGINAL VINYL EDITIONS CAME HOUSED IN A PRINTED 350GSM SPINED OUTER SLEEVE WITH BLACK INNER AND DOUBLE SIDED LP SIZED INSERT A SUBSEQUENT BLACK VINYL REPRESS (300 COPIES) CAME WITH TWEAKED ARTWORK/SLEEVE. SEE PHOTOS BELOW There is a limited edition mail order only bonus 'Psych Is Live' CD-R available now with the black vinyl repress or a very limited amount on it's own. See artwork below BLACK VINYL REPRESS IN ALTERNATIVE SLEEVE
ORDER VIA THE WEBSHOP OR BANDCAMP SITE (IF STILL AVAILABLE)
Psych Is Live is now available as a pay what you like download from the bands own bandcamp site here : https://thecosmicdead.bandcamp.com/album/psych-is-live
CD/LP Tracklisting
1.
Nuraghe (21:54)
2. Psych Is Dead (8:23)
3. #FW (15: 28)
Formed in 2010, The Cosmic Dead are a quartet from Glasgow, Scotland who share their music through good vibes and better vibrations. Known for their improv, chaos strewn, Buckfast smashed against the wall take on space music, they have roamed from Roadburn to Las Vegas, Dundee to Bangalore with each album offering a meditative window into a certain time and space.
'Psych Is Dead' is the sixth
full length album from the band, the glowing embers of a a
few days spent recording in a sweaty Sardinian kitchen
overlooking the Mediterranean Sea. Soon to be available on
LP and CD via Riot Season Records, 'Psych Is Dead' is an
aural exploration of time and space.
"Like a careening,
uncontainable torrent of Buckfast-powered kosmische chaos,
whatever your feelings towards
the Scottish quartet's synth-washed space-jams on record,
their performance is something like having Ken Kesey and
Spacemen 3 pour Irn-Bru directly into your third eye"
The Quietus
"The Cosmic Dead may hail
from Glasgow but their music sounds as if it were created in
another universe altogether" Drowned in Sound
"A swirling, thudding
vortex of sound" Echoes and Dust
The band will be embarking on a selection of dates across Europe to celebrate the release ORDER VIA THE WEBSHOP OR BANDCAMP SITE (IF STILL AVAILABLE)
PSYCH IS DEAD VIDEO TEASER
White vinyl edition of 700 copies for the world ORDER VIA THE WEBSHOP OR BANDCAMP SITE (IF STILL AVAILABLE)
Silver vinyl edition of 300 copies for the world. Mail order exclusive ORDER VIA THE WEBSHOP OR BANDCAMP SITE (IF STILL AVAILABLE)
THE BAND IN BANGALORE 2016
REVIEWS (WILL BE UPDATED AS AND WHEN)
When the ‘Nuggets: Original
Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968’ 4 CD
box set came out in the late 1990’s there was a
hilarious review on the internet at the time where someone
took umbrage at the music being declared as ‘punk’.
This was because, according to the author, everyone knew
that punk began with Green Day. Of course loads of people
piled in on this, in an equally hilarious way. At around
the same time I went to see an amazing spoken word
performance from Jello Biafra. He talked for around four
hours in all, and it was never less than fascinating. Some
in the audience, those dressed with safety pins and
sporting mohicans, were less than impressed to the extent
that Jello had to launch into a diatribe of how ‘it
wasn’t 1977 any more’, and why punk was more of a
state of mind/ way of being than a fashion statement and
being stuck in the rut of a narrow type of music.
Whether the ‘Green Day’
reviewer was serious or not (the punks at the Biafra gig
definitely were), these are brilliant examples of how we
take our music, and the labels we put on it, very
seriously. The punk aesthetic has, in particular, been
through many incarnations and its death has been
exaggerated on any number of occasions.
But what of ‘psych’? I
have, in the past, received criticism from some psych fans
who find the title of my blog misleading. This is because
I don’t exclusively cover psychedelic music that was
released between something like 1965 and 1972 (ironically
including the Nuggets compilation). For me psych, like
punk, is more an attitude; and one that is actually not
dissimilar. Music interests me because it has an element
of experimentalism to it, because it moves me emotionally,
and because it takes me somewhere else when I listen to it
closely, if it then also hits me in a certain visceral way
then I’m happy to consider it as psych music. This
explanation undoubtedly has its flaws and will not be the
same as anyone else’s description, but that’s fine and
in itself within the psych spirit for me.
This is why a bewildering
number of very diverse musicians will call their work
‘psych’, although some do see it as a way of sounding
cool, and on some level it has become a bit like
‘indie’ for many, so broad that it has lost its
meaning or its edge. Whether or not this is the case, and
there’s evidence to show that it is a term that has been
diluted too far. This I suspect is why The Cosmic Dead are
provocatively calling their new album ‘Psych is Dead’.
Do they see too much that is being touted around a
‘psych’ these days as being, well, shite?
If that is the case then this
album definitively does not come under that category.
Recorded in a small stifling kitchen in Sardinia this is
potentially the band’s finest moment to date and, at
times, for me where they’ve come closest to representing
their visceral live performances in their recorded work.
Side one consists of a single
track, ‘Nuraghe’, which opens in a deep mist of fuzzed
feedback before breaking out into what for The Cosmic Dead
is bright and open soundscape. When you know you can
initially tell that this was recorded somewhere warm and
sunny. Gradually though the storm clouds begin to mass
overhead and you are very soon engulfed in a tempest that
really assaults the senses. The intensity of this is huge,
and one of the moments on this album where the raw live
Cosmic Dead really comes through. Once the storm passes,
there is a long section of relative calm which is hypnotic
and strangely melodic before ramping up into a massive
tsunami of a climax.
Opening side two ‘Psych is
Dead’ is a more experimental track that really feels
like an exploration of something new for The Cosmic Dead,
and while the band change tack after three minutes it
remains something that is more nuanced than usual. In fact
it’s hard to pin down exactly why this is different but
it seems to take the band away from their massive sturm
und drang cosmic journeys, if they’re declaring that
psych is dead, they’re certainly moving on here.
Which brings me to the final
track on the album ‘#FW’ (forward?), with it’s
passages of almost pastoral (I use this term in a
relative rather than absolute sense) sounds. This is
possibly the most chilled track I have ever heard The
Cosmic D….holy fuck…just about the five minute mark
and all fucking holy hell breaks loose. This is The Cosmic
Dead at their heaviest and most visceral. This is the
Cosmic Dead unexpurgated and live!!!! This is The Cosmic
Dead on fucking speed…turn this fucker up loud and wait
for the environmental health to come round. This is the
eventually culmination of what Black Sabbath started with
that first self-titled track. The sound of hammers on
metal…the repetition…the colossal unending pummelling
on the brain into submission…sonic blast after sonic
blast as the band career into a whirling dervish frenzy of
guitars and drums. Quite possibly the most breathless and
full on thing I have ever heard on record, and as close as
the band have ever got to replicating their live
performances.
This is the sound of a band
making a HUGE FUCKING STATEMENT! A statement that says
fuck you…this is what WE are about. This is the sound of
a band blasting others out of the water…of wiping the
slate clean and eviscerating the genre with which the have
most been identified over recent years. What a fucking
trip! Follow that if you can! Come and have a go if you
think you’re psych enough…
…I think I get it. This
album consists of three tracks. The first is probably the
most recognisably Cosmic Dead, the Scottish psych band.
The second declares psych dead. The third is proving it.
Whether or not psych is dead is moot as far as I’m
concerned, because The Cosmic Dead here show that they are
very much alive and ready to move on in a manner that
bodes well for the future. This is a massive raised finger
that is backed up with something as raw and visceral as
you could imagine….fuckin’ have it!
PSYCHINSIGHTMUSIC.COM
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