The date is in the diary, it’s written in blood, sweat & tears from our recent political fallout. If April consists of any showers it’s glazed with the melted faces of spring time angst for the psychedelic festival bestowed upon us from the head honchos of Portsmouth Psych Fest. Sailor Jerrys have put up the sponsorship & local Rehearsal Studios Casemates are official associates. Rum & Tech, hand in hand w/ Innerstrings Psychedelic Visuals & a playground fit for the just-undead in Southsea’s The Wedgewood Rooms & Edge Of The Wedge which, houses the second stage hosted by Strong Island Recordings.

For a sample of who’s playing: visit the Facebook Event Page Portsmouth Psych Fest

Bo Ningen – Hypnotic, sporadic guitar-glitch psych pushes paranoia,  drenched & dagger like vocals to a thriving post traumatic stress state of whiplash enthralled in gut-wrenching low frequency oscillations.

Ulrica Spacek – They’ve got their Deerhunter / Atlas Sound / Bradford Cox nailed to the cross, & that cross conceived of bricolage in the form of pure trash-groove in 4/4. Their Album Paranoia steps up the levels of their ‘f**k budget’ – & that’s set to zero f**ks given, at all times.

Saint Agnes – Somebody just set the Taser to ‘reign immediate hell fire’. I’ll be surprised if the Isle of Wight is still standing after the waves of abuse blitz past the hovercraft. There’s a female voice at the mast of their bruise-cruiser & she’s taking names, snapping necks & cashing PayPal.

Lice – These guys sound like Pub Landlord’s with fuzz pedals. When they’re not cleaning the streets Of Bristol they’re rallying together the forefront of pseudo-folklore to demolish every cliché that comes with a ‘British Rock Band’. They’re sprinting from the west head first to tare us on the south coast a new urethra.

Melt Dunes – What I can expect from these lot is a sort of zombie-stoner rock gone awry. It feels like they’re travelling a long way to exhibit the kind of sound that’s taken to tape. I wonder what the commute from hell looks like, we’ll find out… high strapped guitars on a low-budget, tasty.

USA NAILS – I have almost no words. I think this band will incur irreparable damage on our spleens. Goodbye sense of hearing.

Thee MVPS – Dissonance Meets Alt-Metal-Pop. Ballsy coming-of-age vocals cut through the arrangements which, I will call arrangements because even the chaos theory has some unexpected sense of order. It feels like this group have pinned down the Arctic Monkeys & The Sex Pistols by the jugs, with a ‘who dunnit’ camaraderie.

You’re Smiling Now But We’ll All Turn Into Demons – If astrophysics had a smell & that smell conducted an orchestra of frequencies, marched forth by individualised schizophrenic cells – we’d have The Demons. Albeit a foot tapping monstrosity of bloody coagulated rhythms… a delicious viscous.

Vinyl Staircase – If you’ve managed to keep all your vital organs intact & still remain to consist of something that poses some time of countenance – Vinyl Staircase may be your rest bite to ease you into the 5th dimension of psych-bliss.

Strange Cages – Retro-psycho-billy found a digital manipulation to entice an audience tenfold into a new age of decibels. These guys hold a fort worthy of mass domination & hypnotism. They’re tight, they’re heavy, they’re streamlined & they’re circumventing our dispositions with shark-toothed bait.

Bo Gritz – Ever sleep-skanked on a bed of nails? Ever jousted your eyes out with Pogo sticks? I feel like I’m being lured into a fishbowl made of Slinkys, but the Slinkys are taser-laced coils made from psychotic riffs of grit.

Drug Store Romeos – There’s not much to go by in terms of their online presence – what I can gather from scouring the internet is that this group are young & that is enough to frighten me.

Indigo Child – I’d like to believe psychedelic soul is a thing. If it’s a thing, I choose Indigo Child. They’ve got some treat like delicious melodies & sparkling production. Fuzz. Stuff. More Stuff. & they’re from that London aren’t they. Who knows what they’ll do to our poor souls, our poor sea-urchin-working class dietary delinquents.

There’s some music that doesn’t include instruments, that of the thumbs & forefingers instead. DJ’s: FUZZTONES, Jimmy IS BLISS, HIPSHAKER, VELVET CANDY all supply the fundamental heartbeat to the backdrop on the main drag of Southsea.

I can’t wait to burn through 26 packets of in-ear defenders & dodge plastic cups till I’m gilded by storms of glitter.

Written by Samuel H James (@higgy_)

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Drug Store Romeos

Saint Agnes by Keira-Anee Photography

Vinyl Staircase by Byron Chambers Photography