The Quietus Review Liverpool Psych Festival

the Quietus:

I Saw The Fourth Horse: Liverpool Psych Fest Reviewed - At the sixth mind-expanding Scouse gathering, the vibes are apocalyptic but the grooves are wild. Featuring Gnod, The Black Angels and more:
  
Ye gods – what a white-knuckle rollercoaster ride of a week that was! The president of the USA loosened bowels the world over during his inaugural speech to the UN by actually threatening the wipe a nation state off the face of the earth. It’s hard to shake the feeling that disturbed estate agent Donald Trump isn't selling advertising space on the sides of the ICBMs pointed at North Korea having already sold exclusive TV and sponsorship rights to the highest bidder. Meanwhile, our own prime minister attempted to re-establish her authority over that blubbering bowl of fuck that is her foreign secretary so she can drive off the Brexit cliff and into the economic abyss just as she sees fit.

What’s needed at the end of such a hair-raising few days is a weekend of respite, an escape from a world seemingly hell-bent on destroying itself amid the slurry of nationalist bullshit and dick waving by narcissistic psychopaths. Right? Well, yes and no, because if you’re someone who views psychedelia simply as a form of escapist entertainment then clearly your third eye is still firmly shut. As the best bands at this year’s Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia deftly display, altered states of consciousness and the music that they inspire are less about temporarily exchanging one perception of reality for another and more about creating alternatives to the here and now having seen what truly matters. 

Read what they have to say about GNOD & Pigs: the Quietus

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Rock Your Lyrics Interview Luca From Julie's Haircut

Rock Your Lyrics Article:

Ten days ago passing by the Super Sonic in Paris we had the opportunity to see Julie’s Haircut live…it was definitively one of the most powerful shows we have seen in the last few months! Once home, we decided to listen more of their music and especially their last album “Invocation and ritual dance of my demon twin”.

Today we interviewed Luca that answered us about the future projects of the band and , of course, about the meaning behind the verses of their songs……

What is behind the title of your last album “invocation and ritual dance of my demon twin”?

It’s some sort of playful crossed reference to Frank Zappa’s song “Invocation and Ritual Dance of the Young Pumpkin” and Kenneth Anger’s film “Invocation of My Demon Brother”.

We like mixing references, it always adds up to new meanings and interpretative possibilities.

Read the full interview: Rock Your Lyrics

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GIGWISE Review Liverpool Festival

This is what they say: 

......Psych Fest, then, has had to pick from more quantity, but less quality in the last few years. It is to their immense credit that they’ve kept it challenging. The real outliers now lie at the heaviest end of the spectrum – the most furious, hard-hitting, and downright nasty acts, who are well represented across the two day assault. Gnod, for example, whose new album Just Say No To The Psycho Right-Wing Capitalist Fascist Industrial Death machine is one of the greatest things released in 2017, make a good example. Playing unlit in the dark, dingy District space, away from the larger warehouses, their set is bedlam and confrontation twisted into something cathartic and sublime. It lasts only half an hour, but by the time a closing blast of Bodies For Money with its manic seizure of a riff spins into view like a careening truck, it’s genuinely difficult to breathe, such is the brute force of one of the best bands in Britain today. District, it seems, is conducive to such brilliant batterings, for Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs, who perform there the following day. Theirs is a set that’s similarly brutal, but unlike Gnod’s all-consuming opacity undercut with a twisted sense of grotesque fun. Frontman Matt Baty is a tight, bristling unit of blunt, concentrated energy, roaring over riff upon riff of repugnantly heavy guitars. Swigging Buckfast straight from the bottle as he goes, clambering around the amps and donning a shiny pink cowboy hat (“the most psychedelic thing I could think of,”) – he grips the gig with both hands, roaring through a titanic set that leaves a neck, still sore from Gnod, cricked into complete agony......

Read the full article here: Gigwise

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Ltd Goat Psych shirts and bags up for sale

As you may remember we printed up some exclusive shirts and bags for Goats Brixton Academy and Womad shows.

Anyway, there were some left over and they can be exclusively bought from our shop.

But be quick as these will not be reprinted so we expect they will be around for long

Buy from here:

Shirt – White

Shirt – Yellow

Tote Bag – Natural

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Planet Slop reviews Liverpool Psych Fest

They say this about Rocket bands:

GNOD
Scrupulous note-takers that we are, we hereby report our initial reaction to Grim Brides in its entirety: ‘Who the Fuck KNOWS’. This was quickly followed by GNOD, of which we wrote ‘GNOD – ARE GLORIOUS’, and, showcasing the peak of our literary prowess with our last act of the night, we merely wrote down ‘CONTAINER’ and left any further composition for the cold, hungover light of our post-PZYK Sunday. If you missed these three, you missed out.

Reeling out of that, we went straight into GNOD. Titanic. Crushing. One wonders how a band that sound like a tuneful avalanche actually practice. Perhaps in a nuclear shelter somewhere. For the Douglas Adams/Hitch-Hikers Guide fans out there, this is perhaps the closest you’ll get to hearing Disaster Area...

PigsPigsPigsPigsPigsPigsPigs
As the weekend progresses District becomes the venue of peak paranoia at the back of your mind, constantly checking the time because you know if you don’t get there early, you won’t get in at all. Because of this it’s been able to lay claim to some of the best and most frantic Psych Fest performances of recent years. Add PigsPigsPigsPigsPigsPigsPigs to the list.

Getting in 20 minutes early there’s a rather nice man on stage, politely asking for incredibly specific amounts of delay, reverb and rotations. Shirt buttoned up and tucked in he could have quite easily come straight from the office, which made what followed all the better.

The thumbs up from the tech was all they needed to rip loose and get on the business end of a bottle of Buckfast (or two). Their front-man who was before so smartly presented rapidly unravels as he attacks the microphone, which has no problem fighting back, at one point coming close to lynching the singer. A crowd of heads begin to punctuate every beat and barely fault for the sets entirety.

Read the full piece here: Planet Slop

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Watch Gnoomes perform exclusive session for Red Bull

Back in June when Gnoomes were in the UK on their Tschak! tour the band were invited into a warehouse in North London to play two tracks live and be interviewed for Red Bull.

And finally you can watch this is full here (Russia): Redbull

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Get Into This reviews Liverpool Psych Festival

They say this about...

Julie’s Haircut – District, Friday
One of the few criticisms levelled at Liverpool Psych Fest concerns the overuse of reverb-heavy, guitar drone – not this year. District on Friday was anything but, and amid a ten act billing (plus green baize legend Steve ‘never boring’ Davis) of quite remarkable musical variety were Italian quintet Julie’s Haircut. Mixing melodic prog, extreme noise, rocket-fuelled disco and hook-laden pop, here was a band which typifies the festival’s ethos – a truly magical international interstellar band many of those in attendance had yet to hear, but were left nothing short of astounded. What worked best was their mix of subtlety and ambience as they applied layer upon layer of nuance and atmospherics to their sound before breaking out into thunderous saxophone-assisted piledrivers. Much of the set was taken from their 2017 album Invocation And Ritual Dance Of My Demon Twin – including the swaggering shamanistic brew of Orpheus Rising and the tribal pounder The Fire Sermon. It’s no exaggeration to say this wasn’t just the set of Psych Fest of 2017 – but would easily register into the top five sets the festival’s ever hosted. Remarkable stuff. – Peter Guy

Gnod – District, Friday
Gnod are the sonic equivalent of a traffic accident involving a monster truck, an AT-AT Walker and a rhinoceros. Yet their monstrous visceral power is all consuming and enduring. The industrial headfuck is part of the pleasure. Unlike their last Liverpool show at Buyers Club, their Psych Fest performance includes parka-sporting, perma-twitching Neil Francis and it’s his inclusion which lends a somewhat poppier, more inviting edge to proceedings as he rasps amid the breeze-block sonic velocity as once again District’s black box walls are seemingly paint-stripped before our very eyes. By the conclusion it feels like your internal organs have been twanged to pieces. Top marks once again to Rocket Recordings who’s roster, including Julie’s Haircut, was top of the class at PZYK 2017. – Peter Guy

Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs, Pigs – District, Saturday
Matt Baty is unstoppable. For 45 minutes, Baty climbs speaker stacks, swallows his microphone, sweats out his own body weight, drinks a bottle of Buckfast, tootles about in a pink glittery cowboy hat and wraps himself up in cables – all the while projecting his vocals with such force he looks likely to pass out any moment. Amid this half naked wildman’s onstage lunacy his band Pigs x7 detonate a raging rock and roll leviathan. It’s pure riffs. So many riffs. All the riffs. More riffs than Jimmy Page could digest for breakfast. More riffs than Lemmy had Jack Daniels. By the close bass player, John-Michael Hedley is laughing his head off at the preposterous chaos of it all while guitarist Adam Ian Sykes is dishing out his guitar to the front row inviting them to get involved. Wild. – Peter Guy

Read their full round up here: GIT

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Gnew Gnod sister label – 'Golden Ratio Frequencies'

Following in the footsteps of other great Gnod affiliated label Tesla Tapes – we are excited to announce that Alex from Gnod has set-up a new tape label called Golden Ratio Frequencies.

You can read an interview with Alex about the gnew label hear: The Quietus

The labels website is here: Golden Ratio Frequencies 

Plus you can buy the first release by Gardener here: Bandcamp

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Flowers Must Die in Bandcamp Daily's 'The New Face of Prog Rock'

It says:

Flowers Must Die
The roots and influence of progressive rock’s ‘70s icons aren’t far from the surface for Flowers Must Die. Their name comes from the title of an Ash Ra Tempel track, and they have a song of their own titled “After Gong,” a reference to the iconic Canterbury Scene band Gong. The Swedish group certainly lean more toward prog’s cult fringe, which they filter into hallucinatory jam sessions that veer from noisy space excursions to wobbly, synth-laden disco prog. Flowers Must Die aren’t afraid to embrace the weird, which ends up being one of their greatest assets. The farther out they travel, the more thrilling the journey.

Read the full piece here: Bandcamp

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The Most Radicalist reviews Julie's Haircut's Burning Tree single

They say:

JULIE'S HAIRCUT BURNING TREE
Italian experimental-psych veterans Julie's Haircut have been around since the late nineties. Their 20-year career has so far seen collaborations with the likes of Damo Suzuki (CAN), Sonic Boom, Philip Corner and Valerio Cosi to name a few. The bands latest single 'Burning Tree' is a complex exploration of electronica meets post-punk and new-wave. There are hints of Primal Scream, Suicide and Depeche Mode in there, but the result is something totally fresh. Intricate electronic drum beats propel a buzzing wave of modulated synthesizers and gloomy bass guitar, which swell hazily below the eerie vocals. 'Burning Tree' arrives right on cue for Julie's Haircut's UK tour, which kicks off tonight at The Brewhouse in East London.

See the full piece here: The Most Radicalist

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