Mirrors for Psychic Warfare (Scott Kelly + Sanford Parker) debut UK show tomorrow in London
Mirrors For Psychic Warfare, the collaboration between Neurosis’ Scott Kelly and Buried At Sea’s Sanford Parker, are currently on tour across Europe, with Sanford Parker performing his solo experimental electronic set as main support.
Their debut UK show commences tomorrow in London, at the Unicorn in Camden, A FREE SHOW, and the perfect chance to see these two titans of heavy music in a very intimate setting...
LISTEN TO "ORACLES HEX" FROM THE SELF TITLED DEBUT OF LAST YEAR (NEUROT RECORDINGS)
(In case you missed it, you can catch the first trailer at this link.)
MIRRORS FOR PSYCHIC WARFARE AND SANFORD PARKER REMAINING TOUR DATES:
Mon 16.01. FR-Paris Espace B
Tue 17.01. UK-London Unicorn (FREE SHOW)
Thu 19.01. GER-Oberhausen Druckluft
Fri 20.01. GER-Berlin Berghain Kantine
Sat 21.01. PL-Warsaw Beerokracja
Sun 22.01. CZ-Ostrava Barrak music club
Mon 23.01. CZ-Prague Klub 007 Strahov
Tue 24.01. HU-Budapest Dürer Kert
Thu 26.01. CH-Zurich Ziegel Oh Lac
Fri 27.01. IT-Brescia Circolo Colony
Sat 28.01. CH-Luzern Industriestrasse
Sun 29.01. CH-Bern Dachstock
Mon 30.01. AT-Bregenz Between
Tue 31.01. AT-Vienna Arena
Wed 01.02. AT-Linz Kapu
Thu 02.02. GER-Leipzig UT Connewitz
Fri 03.02. GER-Dresden Scheune
Sat 04.02. PL-Poznan LAS
Mirrors For Psychic Warfare released their self-titled debut – a sonic manifestation of insomnia, complete with the tossing, turning, and perennial dread that comes with facing a new day – in 2016 via Neurot Recordings. The five songs that comprise Mirrors For Psychic Warfare lurch and pulsate across a sullen, desolate landscape with an almost curious obsessiveness. You can hear in full at their bandcamp.
Anyone who has lowered their ear into the chasm of sound between metal and industrial in the last couple of decades will most likely have come into contact with Parker’s work. Perhaps through the bands and projects in which he is or has been involved as a musician: the doom-prophesying powerhouse Buried At Sea, the extreme-sound fraternisation, Corrections House, or perhaps the doom/post-metal shamans Minsk. Or maybe via the sheer volume of the releases to which he skillfully brought his very own toxic sound as a producer or sound technician. In this capacity, the name-dropping begins with Pelican, Eyehategod, Rwake, and Voivod and carries on far beyond YOB, Lair Of The Minotaur, and Wovenhand. In many cases (Minsk, Corrections House, Twilight, YOB, Blood Ceremony), he even combined the two areas of activity in an interdisciplinary radicalisation of sound both through the amps and behind the mixing desk.
In a way, this material is the translation of doom into the methods of electronic music. A concept work of cross-genre, dystopian music that builds on the loops and sequencer programs of industrial, but shuns purely linear song structures in favor of instrumental storytelling, the development of which expands a track into an entire world of sound. In the process, Parker knowingly invokes American and British industrial traditions, but equally, his microscopic detail work – primarily observable in the harmonics – could easily have come from German avant-garde electro institutions such as Raster-Noton or Mille Plateaux. These ideas manifested themselves in his solo album of this year, Lash Back, which imposes itself on the contemporary extreme music scene like the black monolith in Kubrick’s Space Odyssey – unassailable, incomparable, and perfect in form. Listen to the record in full at bandcamp.
Purchase Mirrors For Psychic Warfare on vinyl, CD and digital download HERE.
ABOUT MIRRORS FOR PSYCHIC WARFARE:
"Parker's ability to invoke foreboding tones and textures enhances the ritualistic features, bringing MPFW closer in line with Jef Whitehead's defunct project Lurker Of Chalice than Corrections House...the psyche rattling tension they maintain is as unnerving as it gets." - METAL HAMMER
"Imagine a broken mirror on the floor, one shard catching your eye, reflecting a warped, spectral veil emanating from those motherships when at rest, like exhaust pipes slowly bellowing, and a mist created by gradually subsiding engine heat." - ZERO TOLERANCE
"Kelly and Parker deal in a form of debased, defeated industrial future-folk, a zoned-out space cluttered with crunching metallic debris. Some of the quieter moments skirt the dreaded dark ambient category – but that subgenre always seems to suggest hokey cyberdelic techno-sabbats or the Hellraiser sequel in which chief Cenobite Pinhead sashays around on a spaceship. By contrast Mirrors For Psychic Warfare seed concerns about depleted stocks of tinned food and the likelihood of typhoid.” - WIRE
ABOUT LASH BACK:
"Sanford Parker shedding layers until there's only his bare heart exposed - heart, as in a dark powerful engine, an inhuman mechanical contraption pumping oil to his moving limbs."
- TERRORIZER
"As if to ask how much more sonic punishment you can take, Parker saves his most abstract piece for last. The charmingly-titled ‘Sheep Slaughter’ verges on the sadistically nightmarish sounds of noise artists such as Prurient, although it does include quieter, calmer gaps in between the barrages of nastier noises. Thanks to this metal interloper, electronica just got a whole lot heavier." - THE PLAYGROUND
"Sanford has found yet another genre that he is able to master and make his own." - AVE NOCTUM
"Lash Back is not a welcoming record. There aren’t many comparable acts who are so visceral and angular, but it’s a rewarding listen and another success for Parker, who has found another avenue in which to excel. For anyone following his work this is more than worth your time, and for metal fans who are intrigued by electronic music, this may scratch an itch you didn’t know you had." - THE MONOLITH