Ode to Psycore
Chaos is rejecting all you have learned. Chaos is being yourself.
I noticed that explaining what is Psycore to people who aren't in the scene can be quite difficult.
I take the easy, provocative road : "Yeah, this is some freak music upper than 200 bpm". But it lacks some crucial information. How can I explain the evolution of the psychedelic universe ? How can I just define this universe without talking about freedom first ? About the quest for something that can not be touched or looked at ?
To me, Psycore is a projection of what we want to find in our lifes. The beauty that this genre creates can obviously not be heard by a lot of people. It's intense, extreme, brutal and raw. But subtle too. Variations. Composition. Virtuosity.
People say, “it's too fast, I can't dance on it !” But my friend, you have forgotten that party and music can be (and have to be) separated. You won’t dance while listening to Debussy. You have to look for something else in music, to enjoy the kind of aesthetic we provide. It's easy for me, I began my musical journey by listening Free Jazz and learning to understand the dynamics of a kind of music that doesn’t have boundaries. Like the music made by people who had an intense spiritual connection in the music they played, like John Coltrane or Archie Shepp. For them, music was life and death, and everything in-betweeen : they were in search of something. A kind of purity. To achieve the purity you look for, you have to let go a lot of things in your music, in your self.
A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.
It's not Psycore by itself I like. It is the potential it has : used by the right people, this musical paradigm is really the most interesting and exhilarating thing I ever listened to. Because a well-produced Psycore track played on 50kw of crystal clear Void Incubus is something you can't understand if you aren't there. A great producer will play his liveset during eight hours and make you explore zones of your brain you didn't even knew. And you will listen to this again, at home, on you speakers, and it won't be that special.
But why ? How ?
Hey, take the psychedelic paradigm. Make it faster, stronger, with great sound density. Remove all complacency, remove all that can be recognized, make it conceptual and highly abstract, use synthesis a lot, introduce tempo variations, add music sometimes (meaning notes & chords) but not too much because it could destroy this magnificent balance between pure, dark harshness and the purest of the lights. And there you are, you created an electronic apocalypse.
Both beautiful and terrible, a sound that only a few will understand.
What ? 270 bpm abstract & conceptual electronic experimental, 4-on-the-floor (mostly) music can't be MAINSTREAM ?
There is no other world. Nor even this one. What, then, is there?
The inner smile provoked in us by the patent nonexistence of both.
In my world, it could be. A good kick-bass is like a good cymbal drive. In french, we call it "sha-ba-da". Listen to Tony Williams' ride cymbal and you'll know what is a good shabada. Or Alan Dawson.
Sixty years after the most brutal jazz album I ever heard (Coltrane's Olatunji Concert), I have to admit that my 2017 favourite shabadas are more something like K-Owl and Plankton latest kick-basses. Their way of producing their shit is all about Panzer tanks mixed with subtle, subterranean climaxes, with discrete synthesis and minimalist sound-design layers.
Both of them like tempo variations a lot and use that in a musical way to achieve organic musical composition. (Hey, is this organic ?)
I really can't talk about Psycore without making a parallel with Jazz, forgive me. These are my two schools, the two musical places where I learned the most : Jazz teached me instrumental improvisation, in the "now". Psycore teaches me conceptual improvisation. Both in the "now" and in the "what will be the now when you finish that track".
This is not an article to promote Psycore, nor define it : like a lot of musical aesthetics, it is defined when it's playing. And defining it will take me months ; to find the appropriate words, gather information and write it in an understandable shape is difficult. I could define hip-hop because it is already made, but Psycore is still defining itself. No boundaries, it decided to be something apart from the Psytrance movement, philosophically speaking (which is great), and to live by itself, letting people talk to define it with thought and words, which is why I created this blog.
It is more a raw gathering of thoughts I want to communicate, an ode, an essay, a first try to put words on my musical love, than an article about spiritual beings, extraterrestrial composers and active, plant-induced meditation : but I will consent (with great pleasure) to admit all of this, and to call it the Psycore folklore ^_^ BONUS ADS Angry ? Depressed ? Good news, Psycore is your best friend !
Never seen before : Psycore, the best sport !
Le Psycore vous rend plus fort !
