It’s impossible not to fall in love with this story. This is how it is told from the offices of Zombie Soundsystem, the label that was lucky enough to receive Psyfunkel‘s Electronic Mistakes Vol. 1 EP: “We signed them immediately, transferring the advance to a Spanish bank account. Quirkily dancing around the boundaries of house, breakbeat, and techno, we hadn’t really heard anything like this before, yet they fitted into the Zombie sound like a key into a lock. These guys really don’t do software.” According to the label, the third member of the band is a silent person, a mastering engineer who has already worked with Skunk Anansie and Womack & Womack, among others. The other two architects of Psyfunkel… introduce themselves.
We are Joefunkel and Dandroid (the Pronoid Android). Dandroid suffers from pronoia. He is convinced everyone in the universe is conspiring to help him. Originally, we were in an acid funk jam band called Green Glue, but we came unstuck. Meanwhile, Dandroid was a resident DJ at a little-known secret hotspot, churning out beats for days. Literally. He was forced to live in the DJ booth.
The Electronic Mistakes Vol. 1 EP features four very different tracks. All of them give rise to experimentation, but open the door to ambient, breaks, random acid frequencies, hypnotic voices, conversations… They are perfectly playable tracks on a dance floor, but not adapted to large audiences, but to educated eardrums open to surprises and incomprehension.
We have been making tunes together since 2014 and we thought it was about time we let other people hear them. The strongest message is the political message in “Wake Up”: what the fuck are we doing? Perhaps, that’s what it takes: major upheaval. It starts with a bossa nova beat you hear on those old Casio keyboards we had as kids… Totally naff then, but now we realize they are the future.
As for the EP’s production processes, the members of Psyfunkel say that they soon realized that being in a studio can be suffocating and not very inspiring, so they drag their synths and drum machines to snooker halls, friend’s country houses, a huge disused warehouse in New York and even “one of Henry 8th’s old palaces in Surrey, UK (where Joefunkel was caretaker for a while)”. In a few words, pretty much anywhere with power. How could nobody have thought of going to Surrey to produce?
Usually, during the writing process, industrial amounts of psychedelics are used, and then we tidy up the beats on a Tuesday over cappuccinos and croissants.
Psyfunkel’s Electronic Mistakes Vol. 1 EP sees the light via Zombie Soundsystem next Monday, July 27th, but the guys have been keen and let us immerse ourselves today in the warm breaks of “Lucia”, a rough and raw track in which a female voice in a kazoo simply announces “Hello, my name is Lucia”.
“Lucia” features a 14 years old Spanish girl messing around with a kazoo. We usually just leave the offcuts of vocals in, eschewing the modern over-produced and over-sanitized pop production. We are built for large festival stages, tiny basement clubs, and all stops in between. With 20 years of intergalactic DJ experiences between us, we are able to adapt to our environment. Playing your favourite records on a loud sound-system never gets old, even if there’s hardly any crowd. And, if it does, then stop DJing immediately.
Tracklist:
- Psyfunkel – Wake Up (To Your Sunshine)
- Psyfunkel ft. Lucia – Lucia
- Psyfunkel – I Say Yes
- Psyfunkel – Super Snooker Spangle Sunday
(Cover Image: © Zombie Soundsystem)
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