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Psicomagia, Psicomagia: Convening el Congreso

Posted in Reviews on April 21st, 2014 by JJ Koczan

From the very start of opener “El Memorioso,” the self-titled El Paraiso Records debut from Psicomagia is an album that makes short work of assumptions. In both their sound and in their situation, the four-or-five-or-six-piece offer surprises throughout the four tracks/39 minutes of Psicomagia, veering seemingly at will across stylistic borders. To look at their name, the fact that all the song titles are in Spanish and considering they’re on El Paraiso, one almost expects them to be European, but no, they’re based in San Diego, and while they cast off a lot of the heavy psychedelic swirl one might find in West Coast space rockers Mammatus, the jammier Harsh Toke and the ever-glorious Earthless — of the many things Psicomagia are, you would not call them “gnarly,” at least on record — they maintain a progressive mindset that shows up in the crisp execution of these cuts. Comprised of “El Memorioso” (5:19), “El Congreso Pt 1” (14:37), “El Congreso Pt. 2” (12:36) and “Simplõn” (6:20), Psicomagia present a rational and a symmetry even unto the album’s structure that’s mirrored in their fitting sonic balance. At times, their guitar-less blend of Tyler Daughn‘s keys and organ, the tenor sax of Brian Ellis (also of Astra), the drums of Paul Marrone (also of Astra and Radio Moscow), Trevor Mast‘s bass and Bernardo Nuñez‘s spoken word can be dizzying, but they are never without a sense of texture or melody, and the depth of organ tone fills the place where a guitar would no doubt otherwise loose an apparently needless barrage of solos.

So if you think looking at the cover or seeing the tracks that you might know what you’re going to get from Psicomagia, be prepared to be delightfully wrong. While they retain a deep sense of creativity throughout — the rhythmic block hits that start “El Memorioso” give a cinematic beginning to the engaging atmosphere that unfolds — they are never out of control, and while parts may have been developed in jams, they’ve since been purposed into precision jolts of switched-on jazz. Ellis‘ sax and Daughn‘s keys often work in tandem effectively on bop runs while Marrone and Mast lock in heady foundations, and even in a freaked out movement like that which begins “El Congreso Pt. 1,” they retain a sense of direction if not to-the-second plotting. Most of the album is instrumental, but Nuñez‘s delivery — he’s credited in the liner of the digipak with “Poetry,” and the band further credit Daniel Guttierez with “words” online while listing only “…” with the disc — adds to the personality, his voice even for someone who doesn’t speak Spanish giving a human anchor to the musical leaping and cavorting of the instruments behind. Psicomagia is not the kind of album that happens without a consistent and fervent level of confidence behind it, but even as “El Congreso” moves in its immersive reaches between its two parts, none of the indulgence feels unwarranted. It seems like no matter which instrument one might choose to focus on at any given point, there’s something happening that’s worth paying attention to. That could just as easily fall flat, but for how well the musicians worth together.

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