Psychic Malmö is a label that crosses the divide between acoustic and electric, and the boundaries of the label.
The scourge of Sweden continues. Scandanavia is not just making a mark on the circuit box scene, it is eclipsing many established electronics nations. Psychic Malmö is a label that crosses the divide between acoustic and electric, and the boundaries of the label. Psychic Malmö has teamed up with like-minded imprints to bring partnership pieces to vinyl and forage for new sounds.
The Malmö men team up with Deleted Art to introduce the weird world of John Essing. Mörka Ljuset opens the aural mind of Essing to the listener. Abstraction is melded with warped wiring and a primal purity. Night skies, and ill dreams, loom across the album. Essing works somnambulist scenarios into distortion and drone. But don’t be fooled into thinking this is blankness and waste ground, “Leendet” allows creases of something more human to enter. Beats arrive for the piston like “Skedansiktet” before strings are once more stretched with “Handen På Din Hand.” The lush ambience of “Vi Går Ut,” is a beautiful work of subtle simplicity.
Frak, the Börft man delivers a brand new six tracker for the South Sweden fortune tellers. Frak opens Erase with the title piece, a work of staggered synths that border on the fringes of Industrial. “Talk On Answer” maintains the Synth Wave undercurrents. Korg musings are cut by crisp beats for a curiously independent sound. Elements of Chicago are introduced with “Bonga Dance,” but that 80s synth aspect is still present. It could be down to the fact that Frak started his career as an artist, and student, of the burgeoning synthesizer scene set by the likes of Throbbing Gristle and The Normal. The style of the record is very hard to pin down. The reduced sounds of Electro are present but that underlying Wave aspect pervades, such as the reverberating speed race of “RZA.”
Ved bring psychedelic rock to the bubbling brew of Psychic Malmö. The ever unsettling voice of Uri Geller opens Spectra. An odyssey of thirteen minutes ensues. Strings are elasticated, stretched into unending horizons. Beats are reduced to a secondary sound as the quartet of Mattias Nihlén, Adam Persson, Mattias Almlund, Martin Holm and David Hagberg deliver dream drenched ditones. Starokorokas maintains the blissed out tones. Heady notes fall from oriental minds, twisting wind instruments melting with gentle cymbals. Not generally my cup of tea, but Ved do this 60’s style sound well. Madness descends with a blanketing cacophony of competing chords. A thrash out till curtain fall.
House, Experimental, Acoustic and Electronic. This Swedish imprint conjures up a myriad of genres, evoking artists with an ear, and aptitude, for the abstract. Be brave when stepping behind the veil of Psychic Malmö, what lies within is a swirling mist of sounds and intoxicating smoke of styles.
For more information about Psychic Malmö, visit www.psychicmalmo.com.
