A New Pop Landscape

Despite having recorded an album rife with beer bottle clinks and typewriter clacks, Psuche isn’t some loose-knit improvisational experience. DOUG WALLEN speaks to ringleader Oscar Vicente Slorach-Thorn about how the band pulls together their conglomerate of sounds.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.] Assembling eerie pop songs from incidental sounds and glitch-y loops, Melbourne’s Psuche invade the brain as suddenly and completely as a virus rushing into the bloodstream. What began as an ambient solo outing for 19-year-old Oscar Vicente Slorach-Thorn, former leader of noise-rock trio The Indifferent, has become a hard-working five-piece that can recreate nearly every chaotic aspect of the Psuche sound live. The band’s self-titled debut, produced by Touch Typist’s Nick Huggins at his Pocket Full of Stones Studios and released by Two Bright Lakes last month, is a fluid, bewildering stroke of ingenuity that sounds different on each listen.

How did Psuche evolve from your solo thing into a proper band?
Ruby [Green], the clarinet player, and I were seeing each other at the time. So she was always around while I was doing things, and would just have parts. I’d done everything with loop-based beats and drum machines, and I wanted a drummer who was also versatile [enough] to work with tapes and drum machines. So I got Marty [King]. He was a friend and I’d really liked stuff that he’d done in other bands. He’d had a bit of jazz training. Also, at the time I was writing a lot of horn parts, and I got Max [Reiss] in doing saxophone and guitar and random stuff. We just worked with it a lot and played differently every single show, trying to work out how it sat and what felt right … developing it into a band dynamic. It was a slow process but I think it’s locked in now. And more recently Samaan [Fleck] came in to try and capture the sound that we had on the [album]. He also does a lot of ambient stuff live, with lots of closed circuit and Nord synths.

Were you trying to do something less grounded in guitar/bass/drums after The Indifferent?
Yeah, I wanted surprising arrangements and combinations of things that feel like a different landscape for pop songs.

What was the lifespan of each band?
Initially, when I was doing [Psuche] by myself, that was towards the end of 2007. And we’ve been playing as a band since early 2008. The Indifferent was when I was in high school, so [from age] 15 until I was like 16 or 17.

So you got an early start with music?
Yeah. I played in a metal band in Year 7, when I first start playing guitar. I was the singer. [Laughs] I shouldn’t have told you that.

So Psuche is pronounced “psoo kie”?
Yeah, in Greek pronunciation it’s “psoo kie”. It can also be said “psoo khay”.

And why did you choose that name?
The name I just thought was funny because it was full of polarities. I think, spelled differently, it means “the moon” in Japanese. [A similar sounding] word means “shit” in German and is derogatory in Russian, sort of like calling someone a bitch. It’s also got this really sweet, democratic idea of the soul and the mind. It’s the character of any object or being. It’s just an interesting word, I thought.

That seems fitting for the music, where sounds are constantly transforming and resembling other sounds.
Yeah, and lyrically as well. They’re jokes in a way but they’re also extremely honest, like taking the piss out of yourself. It’s kind of trying to be antiheroic.

The lyrics are pretty surreal. I like the line at the end of ‘Lions Blood’: “This lion has a rose in its jaws/This lion’s blood is silver.”
That’s a reference to a Colin Platt book called King Death. In the book, a character has this reoccurring dream about this lion who’s sort of his lover. It’s always injured and he’s taking care of it.

Other than a reference like that, how do you arrive at lyrics?
They’re accounts of events being lived or dreams. But there are a lot of references to books and interesting things people said. There’s a lot of quotes. I always start singing things when something’s happened to me.

So it’s a way of recording events, like a diary.
Yeah, exactly.

With so much going on musically, what’s the role of the vocals?
It’s what makes it figurative. Without the words it would be very abstract and could be interpreted in a lot of ways. It’s having a human there. It’s like a person in a photo for context.

Psuche is described as a “free pop ensemble” on the Two Bright Lakes website. What do you think of that description?
[Producer] Nick Huggins coined that term. I like that term. I don’t feel I can put anything into a genre usually, so to be honest, I don’t really agree with any genre-specific labels on any band.

“Without the words it would be very abstract and could be interpreted in a lot of ways. It’s having a human there. It’s like a person in a photo for context.”

There’s a wide range of sounds on the album. What are some of the more unusual ones?
Um, I made some of the beats in ‘Ha Ha’ out of clicking used disposal cameras, the flash going off, and sort of stabbing myself with the mic and fanning my mouth while blowing, like wings. There’s a lot of beer bottles on the album. Everyone’s sitting around hitting beer bottles. I have a music box from Germany. You can punch the holes into a pianola roll which you feed into it, so I transcribed some of the parts [that way]. In ‘I Sea A Wolf’, that’s a music box initially, carrying that line. I think our next album’s gonna have a lot more toys, and I’ve been collecting two-dollar-shop keyboards and rejected Casios.

Aren’t there typewriters as well?
Yeah. And what’s it called with old Macs with the voice, when you get it to speak? There’s that, cut up.

Do all of those different pieces come together through improvisation?
No, not at all.

So it’s all set in place and can be replicated live?
Yeah. Often we’ll try to use all the materials [live]. I think timbre is more important than note choice. What’s playing the part is really important. Like, you can’t replace a line on a guitar that’s been played on something else. When we recorded [the album], I had lists and schedules for all the different parts. It was ordered.

Did you write these songs as a band, or did you write them and bring them to the band?
Half half. Martin’s role was often … whatever idea I had I would give him, and he’d take apart that and reinvent it in his own way. It’s like that with everyone. I wrote all the parts, but they do them the way they feel natural.

A lot of those makeshift instruments must have been tough to mic properly.
Well, Nick’s a very resourceful guy in general. [Laughs] He’ll give himself too much to do, so he was in fine form doing ridiculous things with so many microphones. There were some precarious moments, like broken organs. But it went well. It was just very hectic. It was very rushed.

Do you think that improved how the album turned out?
I think you’ve got to let go. Doing the vocals, I had two days to do them. I was very tired and stressed at that point, and didn’t actually feel like I was, for some of it, in the right mind frame. That was one thing that annoyed me, but you’ve just got to let it go. It can always be better. And it did get pretty close to how it was in the mind’s eye beforehand.

What’s a typical live show like?
Well, they’ve gotten less and less shambolic. I think the instrument changes have become really integrated. Things run relatively smoothly. I also think the energy of it live is more lighthearted, in a way. It’s more engaging in that sense. It’s less self-indulgent and more fun.

What’s it like for you singing these very personal, if abstract, lyrics in front of people?
It can be really hard. There’ve been times where it’s been really overwhelming to have to sing. Like last night, someone had requested a solo Psuche set with just a nylon-string acoustic guitar. So I played a lot of songs really stripped back. That was really, really full on. It felt really bare, and like it should have only been played to a couple of people. There were way too many people there. It was horrible [laughs]. But it’s also cathartic.

The band seems to be playing quite often at the moment. How intentional is that?
I really wanted to just bombard and play as much as possible, because we’re going to take a break in like two months because two members are going overseas. I just wanted to be recognised before we went back into the dark for a little bit. So it was intentional. I say yes to shows too much, but we’ve been playing live really well lately. It feels really fun.

Are you planning to record with Nick Huggins again for the next album?
No, we’re just going to record it onto four-tracks at home and use Pro Tools and things. I kind of want to record with Nick but I also really want to take time with it and spend whole days on one layer, and have it very much recorded at 4am in my house.

I want to talk about your involvement with Two Bright Lakes and Albert’s Basement.
The mother gooses.

Yeah, what’s it like to be part of these collaborative circles, with so much creativity pulsing through them?
Well, Two Bright Lakes is fantastic. They’re really supportive. The way it works is sort of hard to explain. It’s sort of like a co-op. All the other bands are really good. And Albert’s Basement is ever-changing. It’s got a real randomness to it. Initially it was actually Michael [Zulicki] and I who organised it, and it was just complete idolism, just getting every bedroom act and exposing them. Michael is really taking control. At the moment he’s obsessed with releasing cassettes, and there’s some really great new people he’s releasing. I’m doing a [solo] cassette for it as well. There’s a compilation [Warm Cupboard] coming out soon with a lot of my favorite Melbourne acts.

Do you feel like the Melbourne music scene is swelling at the moment with all these likeminded bedroom acts?
I think there’s definitely families. I don’t think it’s one conglomerate tribe. There are families and different groups. It’s really internal among these little crowds. It’s quite interesting.

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PSUCHE UPCOMING SHOWS

Sunday, June 14
Bar Open, Melbourne, VIC

Monday, June 15
Birmingham Hotel, Melbourne, VIC

Tuesday, June 23
Old Bar, Melbourne, VIC

Thursday, July 2
The Empress, Melbourne, VIC

Thursday, July 9
The Empress, Melbourne, VIC

Wednesday July 15
The Tote, Melbourne, VIC

Thursday, July 16
The Empress, Melbourne, VIC

Wednesday, July 22
Old Bar, Melbourne, VIC

Thursday, July 23
The Empress, Melbourne, VIC