Psyche Cycles was emailed to me in the midst of the holiday chaos and I just got around to listening to it today. The emailer, Mitch, half of the wonder duo known as Hear Hums, sent me praise for the site and a list of links that he thought I might find interesting. The album was released on Crash Symbols and is available on cassette along with digital links here. There's also a link to download the whole album for free if you really want, but as always, I encourage you to support the artists.
This visual/experimental/soundscape masterpiece has left me with a flood of reactions that are really hard to put in order, so bear with my ramblings. When Mitch mentioned that Psyche Cycles was an exploration into his own human psyche and the mood transitions it experiences, it really made me listen to the album with a new mindset. The rawness and harshness of tracks like "Placid Recoup" and the surreal tranquility of "Talluhlassip" remind me of the extremes we experience as humans, and that our moods are all predetermined by our previous experiences and how we reacted or the situation in which we experienced them, much like the whole album is listened to as almost a single track. The track before determines which directions the whole album is headed.
The sound spectrum across the album is enormous which fits perfectly in which the context of the album was written. Our human psyche is enormous, filled with everything you could possibly think of. There really is no limit to our mind if you think about it. There are only limits if you set goals.
In my Electronic Music class the Okester has been shoving this idea down our throat that we need to write about music objectively, to state the facts about the music. But music as an art is supposed to arouse emotions and induce mental stimulation, and there's nothing objective about that. Each listener has their own unique reactions to music, and I think we should be more interested in the uniqueness of the experience rather than the hard facts about the music; anyone can point those out. So I say write about music subjectively, and let us share our experiences with the class, Mr. Oke.
Here are my two favorite tracks from Psyche Cycles -
Mitch had mentioned that they enjoy the "hands on" aspect of their musical endeavors. Here's a video they created for the first two songs of the album, filmed and edited by the band. All original footage.
-Charlie
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