Psychdelia is a phrase much bandied about in dance music, often with little to commend it than chucking a bit of delay over a drop and pretending they’re on a magic mushroom bender. But in Psychemagik and Jagwar Ma’s Jono Ma, we have two veritable connoisseurs of the art. Psychemagik, who recently self-released their great lost album, (recorded for a major and then predictably shelved) in both their compilation selections and productions know exactly how to offer quietly unsettling music without losing a grip on the dancefloor. Here they take the original in a completely different direction, bringing in elements of industrial and trip hop, a veritable studio barney between Tricky and Ministry (possibly in a studio in Portishead), while the dub throws caution to the wind coming on like some bastard offspring of David Fincher’s Se7en: the heart’s filthy lesson, indeed. Jono Ma, both as part of Jagwar Ma, and in his other endeavours (2018’s ‘Springfield’ by Dreems and Ma coming to mind) knows his way around sufficient electronic trickery to deliver a beautifully mindwarping journey here, assisted in his quest by some subtle 303 tweaking and a loping rhythm drives the track with a pleasingly glacial pace.
Producers Simeon Jones and Nathanael Williams unleash a futuristic club banger backed with two intoxicating in-studio sessions. Bandcamp New & Notable Mar 31, 2021
supported by 20 fans who also own “Automatic Remixed”
Like so many others, this came like a bolt out of the blue and, even though it's well before payday, I had to have this astonishing album on vinyl to prove it exists. The feel of the tunes makes me feel like the Impressions do, Curtis Mayfield, the big spaces and instinctive horns and stuff drifting in and out. Great grooves and I can see lots of ghosts nodding along to this with big smiles on their faces. At last! Anthony Cottrell