Interview Toast of Perth: Psychedelic Porn Crumpets
Perth’s latest psych hopefuls are taking the genre and compressing it into a series of direct oddball nuggets.
“You get those old psych bands with these 40-minute solos and unless you’re completely off your tits then you’re just waiting for something to happen,” begins guitarist Luke Parish. “But psych music is the only genre that doesn’t hone in on one thing,” joins in co-axeman and vocalist Jack McEwan. “It’s so vast, and you can go from a Radiohead album to Mars Volta to Godspeed You! Black Emperor because it’s a free pass to do anything. It’s so progressive at the moment that people are trying to push the boundaries rather than join them.”
Hailing from the fertile musical hotbed of Perth (home to Tame Impala, Pond, Methyl Ethel and more), the two men, plus pals Danny Caddy (drums) and Luke Reynolds (bass) make up Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - the newest outfit aiming to follow their kinsmen into the technicolour hinterlands of music’s spectrum. But while the combination of a truly atrocious name plus a genre prone to noodling might suggest that the Crumpets are just another bunch of acid-soaked mind-benders, the quartet are actually coming from a slightly altered angle. Instead of elongated fret-wanking, the likes of recent singles ‘Cornflake’ and ‘Social Candy’ are proof that you can be brimming with ideas while still clocking in around the concise, four-minute mark. Luke has a theory. “Both [those songs] are quite compressed, because in the process you squeeze the orange. All the other stuff and the rind goes in the bin and you just get the orange juice at the end,” he begins. “But if you like oranges then you’ll probably still like the orange juice.” Well, indeed.
“We’re trying to go as far into the deep end as possible without actually going mad, but we’re slowly failing at that.”
— Jack McEwan
Meeting originally through their drug dealer (now the orange analogy makes slightly more sense...), the quartet have been plugging away back in Australia for a few years with two LPs (‘High Visceral’ Parts 1 and 2) to their name. Now, with a recent, sold out debut UK tour under their belts and an unfortunate broken nose incident due to an enthusiastic “whole room death circle” to take back home, the band are heading towards LP3 - their first to land on these shores. “We want it to be the funnest album possible,” nods Jack. “We’re trying to go as far into the deep end as possible without actually going mad, but we’re slowly failing at that.” At least they’ve already got the name to match if they do.
Records, etc at
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Shyga! The Sunlight Mound (Cd)
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Levitation Sessions (Vinyl LP - yellow)
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - And Now For The Whatchamacallit (Cd)
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Fronzoli (Vinyl LP - blue)
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Night Gnomes (Vinyl LP - purple)
Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Night Gnomes (Cd)
As featured in the October 2018 issue of DIY, out now.
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