Psymanteum by Andy Pickford

VERSION 2 rl. 29/04/2022 as UPC 5056495 049937 on gen. rel.
Cos this is literally a single-session album with every part spread across the screen as one huge single track, it's been ground-up remixed/mastered. Erm.. that bit about 7a and 7b: yeah it really should've been in 12 parts but that would've been too obvious for me at the time! All files now 24bit wav except the complete work which is 16bit flac.

Okay already, so the word is "Psychomanteum" and I shortened it to Psymanteum because... reasons!

This project began on August 31st 2019 and was finished by September 18th. So quite a compact but intensive session. These are very often the best ones! Even so, at the very beginning I panicked and nearly decided I didn't know how to do this one.
The reason I struggled at the start was because of how very different the approach to it was. For starters I wanted the whole thing to run along the length of an ambient backbone I laid down on the first day. That meant it had to be composed entirely on a linear basis almost like it was just one long piece. I also decided to limit myself to just 8 tracks over the initial backdrop, forcing me to draft in additional braincells, a tough call at my age!
The result is almost "soundtrack-ish".
As for where precisely my head was at throughout this time, think Fiim Noir, rainy streets, cityscapes, Vangelis' Blade Runner OST, good ol' TD and Uncle Tom Cobleigh & All. To be honest it's a darker sounding place than most of my works. I was very consciously seeking something of a Lughnasad kind of depth, which itself isn't an easy mind-frame to achieve. Only this time things kinda went along a darker road.
Sometimes I'm given to reminisce about the music I grew up with. It makes me sad that all these incredible musicians are gone or on the way there and their/our style of music is fading. It's often imitated in ways which sound like memes of its former self. So I guess the part of me which grew up there wanted to inhabit that zone and capture some of that atmosphere as deeply as I could. So I have here the spiritual depth of Lughnasad, but with much darker atmospherics. In actual fact the opening track scares me with the lights out!

Oh, and there's something kinda paranormal about this music, not that the title gives it away at all! Seriously, I've been hearing things in this I can't remember doing myself, which is really weird. I can't get any weed strong enough to get this effect and my coffee's Kenco so I doubt it's that!! Perhaps I had a guest adding to the spookiness!
The stringy sounding bit right after the opening piece was me still panicking because I hadn't a clue how to follow it. So I had this thought: "Three Blind Mice, Three Blind Mice, I Don't Know Where I Can Go From Here!" :-D Yeah but then the weed clearly got better.

Last track... Amidst all the feeling of time slowing down and running out which you get throughout Psymanteum, I reached the place to end it and could only think of the genius synth dudes we've lost along the way and those we will lose in time.
There isn't that all nice and cute, although I'm sure the dudes I'm all sentimental about wouldn't cross the road to piss on me if I was on fire even if they could. Awesome times, awesome music though. Hope you enjoy my meagre effort :-)

I make immersive synth music, create my own art, eat, drink, shit and exist. Having been doing this for 40 years has got me into Wikipedia. Whoopee!

en.wikipedia.org