Psyche: Re-Membering Dwayne LP (Dark Entries, 2014)
April 27, 2014 at 8:03 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment
Psyche: Re-Membering Dwayne LP
This is actually the vinyl issue of an album that came out on CD in 2010 on Artoffact Records, but this version contains half as many tracks as the CD, which had lots of remixes and additional tracks that aren’t on this release. But this is an archival release of music by legendary Canadian industrial band Psyche, recorded in 1983 with Dwayne Goettel, who would eventually be known as a key member of Skinny Puppy, as well as many of their side projects (Hilt, Doubting Thomas, Tear Garden, Download, etc.). As with a lot of Dark Entries releases of early material by bands that would end up becoming more famous and commercial, this is raw, noisy, lo-fi early ’80s synth music, recorded to cassette or 4-track, with primitive drum machines, naive vocals, heaps of distortion, and plenty of isolation-induced panic. Two different versions of the song “Torture” bookend the release, the “alternative mix” featuring a rougher sound and spoken word intro, and both mixes featuring air-raid siren synths and pained screaming. There’s also two versions of “Krieg”, a sleeker, midtempo track that could be from a less active scene of an action movie or show, with spoken lyrics about, what else, isolation. “Eye Of The Hurricane” and “The Crawler Theme” are more soundtrack-like instrumentals (there’s also a vocal version of “The Crawler”), and “Screaming Fire” is an excellent Skinny Puppy-ish noisy industrial-punk song, easily my favorite on the album.
The Answer Is In The Beat 
Leave a comment