PSYCHE After your more famous records, we have Daydream Avenue from 1991 and Intimacy from 1994. How would you recommend these records to someone who listened only until The Influence? Well,Intimacy has some elements ofThe Influence style such as “Broken Heart” and “Love Is A Winter,” but it’s a little weirder because there are elements of lounge and chill out styles mixed with horror themes such as “Freaks!” It’s like a strange sequel made by my brother as opposed to The Influence made by David Kristian. I am very fond of “Blind,” and “The Cathedral” as well. Daydream Avenue has a few highlights, especially “Angel Lies Sleeping” which was a hybrid of Ministry’s Twitch album sound, and the more pop Our goal has always been to further develop what synthesiser music has to offer. side of techno just developing at the beginning of the 90s.As always in between the experimenting with various styles of dance music, there are the dark melancholic songs such as “Ghost” and “Destiny.” This is why I say because of my lyrics and vocal style, it still ends up sounding like Psyche even if some of the instrumentation changes. Even the strange hiphop electro sound on“What SorrowCannot Say”doesn’t take away from the sombre tone of the song itself. How did working with Remi Szyszka changed Psyche? He first worked with you on Sanctuary, was it difficult to have another musician onboard? I’m attempting to avoid talking about the line-up changes with Psyche these days as I don’t like to put toomuch weight on the outcome of what makes the Psyche sound specific. Madonna works with many different people, but she is still Madonna. Also, sometimes things change that are not on purpose.They may happen for personal reasons or whatever. Remi came at exactly the right time, and “Sanctuary” actually created what they call a reboot for movies, but for Psyche in music.The albums The Hiding Place and Babylon Deluxe are what needed to happen in the 21st century, and so I’ve been very lucky to create all these new songs within the realm of Psyche with musicians who each developed additions to the sound as it continues to grow its own unique library. I’m very choosy, so unless I feel we are within the right vibe I usually won’t record. The song “Looking Glass” was Remi’s idea of what makes a typical Psyche song. In Endangered Species (2002) for example, we can find some remixes. Do you like to remix yourself? How do you feel when you hear someone’s remix of one of your songs? www.peek-a-boo-magazine.be - 20 - I have a love/hate relationship with remixes. I prefer extended mixes of the basic foundation as it was done in the 80s. Occasionally, however, a remix completely recreates the song to the point that something new comes out of it.Those can be really cool.Not too fond of ones that just try to add a different dance beat that I normally wouldn’t approve of in the first place. That’s why we like to remix ourselves. I tried the experiment of different versions for the 20th anniversary of Unveiling The Secret in 2006 with the Unveiling The Secret 2.0 release. On that one I loved the Christian Piotrowski mix so much I added it to some compilations,and even performed that version live a few times. Still, some songs are so powerful in their original, there’s almost no point in changing it.“The Saint BecameALush”in the Radical G mix is rather exciting, though, I think it takes all the great elements of the original, but makes an alternative version, also more like a reboot than a remix. It’s like doing the song all over again, keeping the atmosphere and style, but recorded with a different vision.A parallel universe version. Could we say that Brave NewWaves Session (A Brave New Waves Session with music from Psyche was released in 2018) is a kind of Canadian Peel Sessions? What’s the period represented there? Yes, Brave NewWaves was a big deal in Canada, and helped inspire many a musician by bringing us alternative music from all over the world. It’s the first place I heard Anne Clark, earlyMinistry,Tuxedomoon,and the like.Once again Psyche’s trajectory has never been streamlined with a plan and as it happened, the session is more like a lost moment in time.My brother had just performed with me live in Montréal for the last time.Since his diagnosis of schizophrenia, it had become too distressing for him to perform. We had a third member Eric Klaver who performed twomore shows withme after my brother went home. Unfortunately, this also was in the time that we had received the chance to do this special radio recording session. Other than “Unveiling The Secret” all the songs were written and improvised by Eric Klaver, and myself, with additional help from Kevin Komoda (Rational Youth). So, it’s even beyond a John Peel Session where the songs are also usually on albums before and after. In this case what you hear on“Brave NewWaves”was only recorded for that session, and shows once again a range of ideas representing a spontaneous intermezzo in the Psyche repertoire. The 11th Hour (2005) is your last record so far.We haven’t spoken yet about your lyrics, how do you write them? Do you think this album is special in that sense? Well, I mentioned my lyrics to some of my favourite songs in the other questions. I think The 11th Hour is extremely prophetic as I was writing from a very dark place about
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