Friday Full-Length: Psychedelic Source Records, Vertical Railsides
Vertical Railsides was recorded at Lake Balaton, which is one of Hungary’s most popular vacation destinations. Each summer, people from Budapest and the surrounding cities and towns, from the counties surrounding, and really from wherever, near and far, spend time at what they just call ‘the Balaton’ stretched on a slight diagonal horizontally across a decent portion of the western half of the country. My understanding is it’s lovely. When I was in the country two summers ago, we didn’t get to see it and it’s been in the back of my mind since.
I’ve covered a fair amount — not nearly all — of the releases from the Hungarian collective Psychedelic Source Records over the last few years, a group of players weaving in and out of various projects, bands, jam sessions, and so on, all operating under the umbrella of the label and often, as in this case, using PSR as a moniker as well. On Sept. 4-5, Psychedelic Source Records will take part in Jam in the Psych Castle, in Pusztazámor, with an improv session — I’ve got a post for the fest scheduled for Monday with the final lineup — and while they’re not really on socials anymore and have never been super-hyped, as a group they are prolific to a point where if a month only brings one release, you might wonder if everything’s okay. Vertical Railsides was released this week, July 26. They had two offerings out in June. One or two in May. You get the idea.
Most of them are pretty raw, and that’s part of the aesthetic being explored. The title Vertical Railsides references trains in two of the eight tracks that make for an encompassing 84-minute listen because where it was recorded, at guitarist Ákos Karancz‘s vacation cottage, is situated near train tracks. In “Singin’ Train” (7:52) and “Song of the Railway” (6:07) this comes into play, just as you can hear rain falling as a steady backdrop for “Pure Rain” (8:47). This — as well as the vague voices of little children speaking and being shushed and redirected, electrical noise, and so on — becomes part of the music, blurring the line between where life ends and the song begins. That Vertical Railsides is so abidingly mellow, ambient, bordering on minimalist in places, leaves room for all of these things, and part of what makes it such a beautiful, if melancholy, listen.
A total of four players took part in the sessions over the course of three days. Of course, Karancz is on guitar — he has proven on multiple occasions that he’s down to noodle, 
and that’s definitely part of the crux here — along with Bence Ambrus, who handles the recordings/edits, often organizes the logistical whens and wheres of the collective’s jams. Ambrus also plays bass and an electric mandolin at points, while Barna Bartos adds acoustic guitar and the ever-malleable Krisz Megyeri provides percussion on a Persian tar drum, intermittently, barely there in “Late Introduction” (9:59) but underscoring much of the exploration in the extended “The Source” (29:39) before its ending section where the buzz of what sounds like a loose cable becomes part of the drone.
None of these players are unfamiliar with each other, and I have to think that’s part of what lets them develop such an identity and manifest such chemistry on Vertical Railsides, as audible in the way “Named Form” (11:09) is so fluidly guided by the soft meader of the guitar and the way they’re able to dwell in pieces throughout without succumbing to impatience or at any point here-presented losing the plot. That is to say, editing is always a part of Psychedelic Source releases for the ways in which a given outing takes shape, but while certainly possible, it’s hard to imagine this assembled four-piece ripping out max-volume scorch elsewhere while the subdued flow of “Singin’ Train” and the multiple-stage unfolding of “The Source,” which puts effects on the surrounding voices early for an even trippier take and introduces the mandolin as someone’s kid is upset about something, the drum holding it together all the while. Again, could be that that’s how it went, but the audio here makes it sound unlikely, and that’s emblematic of how vivid a picture they make across the songs.
“The Source” is a world unto itself, or at least an album, and it feels kin to the three-minute closer “Wise Man Does Not Fight,” which is more active on Vertical Railsides‘ relative scale, but the primary impression remains that the music took shape around the environment and the situation, that the moment became the song, and while of course no portrayal is without human input — that is to say, consciousness shapes experience on all sides (creation and consumption), and just as electrons don’t exist until observed, there invariably was some plan at work, even if it didn’t emerge until they were already underway — Psychedelic Source Records‘ output is so evocative in part because how it was made, the circumstance, becomes part of what’s presented to the listener. So far as I can tell, at no point in the recording does anyone’s phone ring.
That might be the real triumph here, as the group assembled not only managed to get together in this place, but to be there, be actually present, in the moment while this music and life were happening simultaneously. The bits of road/trian noise in opener “The Way Itself From Eternity” (7:22), a cough at about 5:45 into “Singin’ Train,” that hum in the midsection of “The Source,” and so on, are details that don’t take the listener out of the experience, but enrich it and add to the immersion that becomes so much of what Vertical Railsides is about for the listener. You can get lost in it easily, and I don’t think you’re wrong to do so, but on headphones, the resonance both of the guitar and of the surrounding instrumentation generally feels like it’s in direct conversation with the moment of its making, and to hear that captured so distinctly is refreshing and worth conscious, lucid attention, even if you’re taking it on for a psychedelic-escapist getaway, as I most certainly am.
Maybe next year, the Balaton.
As always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.
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I’m going to two shows this weekend. Tonight at Dingbatz in North Jersey (about a half-hour away) is Thunderchief, Clamfight, Precious Blood and The Crooked Skulls. Four-band night. Sunday in Brooklyn is an early show — starts at 4, I think? need to confirm — with Abronia on the Eastern Seaboard for the first time. That’s a band I’ve covered and whose work I’ve enjoyed for the better part of a decade that I need to see, so while I’m already agonizing about the drive to wherever the hell in the borough Mama Tried is, it’s a necessary evil.
Reviews of those Monday and Tuesday. Also Tuesday is a full premiere of the new 10,000 Years album, while Thursday brings another full premiere for the multi-band Sleep tribute that’s coming out, and there’s other stuff I want to write. I’ve had a Buzzard interview in the can for a while that needs to be edited and that will take time and mental effort that, honestly, I haven’t had this summer thus far as we’ve been dealing with school stuff, which is ongoing.
This week we finally heard from the school we’ve been trying to place The Pecan in and have been waiting to hear from since before the school year actually ended. They fired their admissions coordinator, and were most apologetic about the delay, then told us that The Pecan “got physical” with staff during her shadow day — as she inevitably would in a new, anxious situation; when I picked her up from that day-long visit, the only feedback I got was she “had a great day” from that person who no longer works there; The Pecan doesn’t tell you shit, ever — and that they were willing to provisionally accept her so long as the district can provide a one-to-one paraprofessional with the caveat that if after 30 days she’s disruptive, they might kick her out.
What a fucking bummer that was. We waited half the summer for them to basically tell us they don’t want her. The place that seemed so ideal, saying basically that they can’t and/or don’t want to handle her. The only place that has seemed to see her as a person rather than a behavioral problem being like, “yeah but that behavior is a problem.” I can’t count the hours of lost sleep over the last two months, but I know I’ll never get them back.
Earlier this week we visited a much-closer-to-our-house special school. It’s on the property of the local catholic church — red flag — but not religiously affiliated, just renting a building. Still, you drive in and there are flags lining the drive with this weird, super-American conflagration of eagles and crosses, ‘American Jesus wants you to beat queers,’ all that kind of shit. Red flag. We talked with the head of the school while The Pecan played with kids in their summer program and she mentioned The Pecan’s medication like four times in what was a clearly-ideologically-fueled disdain for medical intervention — red flag — and could offer few details on curriculum or how they’d be able to actually teach her anything — red flag — but honestly at this point I’m almost willing to kiss up the year if she can be in an environment that isn’t going to tell her she’s a problem, or that she’s bad, even if they use more modern ‘vibe-oriented’ verbiage or a token economy to do it.
Fucking hell.
She’s going Monday for a trial day at this other place, and between what we (finally) heard from the other school and the absolute lack of other possibilities, I think if the trial day goes even moderately well, we need to give this one a shot. I don’t know that it’ll work, I don’t know that it’s the right choice, I don’t know that it isn’t a secret rape factory, and I don’t like not knowing those things, but tomorrow is Aug. 1 and she needs to be in a school. This has been a wretched, miserable process and a wretched, miserable summer because of it. It has been the worst part of every day, from coming out of second grade at the public school to the waiting to hear, and now to this. We’ve entered a different stage of awful, and The Pecan has also felt the stress. I don’t know what’s going to happen. At this point, if I could homeschool her, I would. I can’t.
Because I can’t handle her either. Her demand-avoidance, her fuck-youness, the barking orders, the need for control, the grabbing, the claw in my face, the hitting. The first decision she ever made — and I don’t tell this story because I know it sounds ridiculous, but you weren’t there and I was — was not to listen. She was like 18 months old, was throwing food on the floor, I picked it up and said “No,” as one will, and she looked right at my face, smiled and did it again. It was the first conscious decision she ever made. That’s been our whole relationship. I’ve never been able to tell her shit, and these days she wants fuckall from me unless she’s shouting for a slice of pizza or talking about Zelda, which at this point is the bulk of what we share that’s actually fun. I could no more homeschool her than I could a rock, and that she’s a genius doesn’t make it easier in the slightest.
But for the last two-plus months, it’s been what life is. The worst part of every day. We’ve dwelled in it, and it sucks so, so much. School’s been a challenge since she was in pre-K now six years ago. She hit somebody at her kindergarten orientation. There’s never been a fit and it’s becoming increasingly apparent that there’s never going to be. We do and have done our best. Nothing works. And that’s not in terms of trying to ‘fix’ her — she is who she is, it’s not a question of ‘fixing’ — I’m just talking about getting through a day without her or either of us as her parents feeling like garbage.
I have a doctor’s appointment for a physical on Monday. Maybe I’ll have a tumor and we can change things up for a while.
But yeah, I’m gonna go to shows and be social and blah blah. Sure to be awesome. I’ll probably be stoned, writing on my phone, avoiding eye contact. Dingbatz has chairs in the back but they look at you like the motherfucker you are if you don’t order a drink. Which I don’t, because I don’t drink. At least I can tell my doctor that.
Great and safe weekend. Hydrate, abolish ICE, fuck fascism, all that.
FRM.
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Tags: Hungary, Páty, Psychedelic Source Records, Psychedelic Source Records Vertical Railsides, Vertical Railsides
