1. Growing Up
I was always drawn to music as a creative outlet. I can remember my mum buying me a copy of The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers and Billy Ocean’s single ‘Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car’ on cassette tape when I was really young. When I was eleven I had a job cleaning bins after school. I saved up all my money to buy a CD player and a copy of Nirvana’s Nevermind and Jimi Hendrix Live at Woodstock. I was obsessed with Nirvana. My dad is a part-time musician still, and as a kid I always wanted to learn to play an instrument and be in a band or play music somehow. I can remember getting up early on weekends to watch Rage and then Recovery or Video Hits.
2. Inspirations
It’s hard to pin down one facet of music or the other, because I’m constantly inspired by new stuff, whether it be a song or a new band or album I’ve come across that perhaps I wouldn’t have been interested in at another stage in my life. I would say one amazing album that has a uniquely different sound, which has always been something that I have been in awe of, is At The Drive-In’s Relationship of Command. I remember hearing it for the first time and thinking ‘what the fuck is this?!’ I’ve felt that way many times about Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Pink Floyd…the list is long…
3. Your Band
We’re a group of long time mates. We all kinda went to school together at some point or have known each other for over ten years. I think it really helps being able to play with close friends as it’s easier for us to get on the same page musically.
4. The Music You Make
I think the psych bands of the 60s are a musical touchstone for all the members of the band, with regard to Psychlops Eyepatch. Our inspirations that are specific to the band extend further than that to incorporate elements of punk, garage and surf-psych, with a contemporary aesthetic. I don’t think we sound like a sixties spin-off or revival band nor do we want to. We aspire to be a band that uses inspiration from the past to try and make something new.
5. Music, Right Here, Right Now
We were recently lucky enough to be invited on air by 2ser’s Thee Sonic Assassin for his Sideways Through Sound program to promote our debut release Paranoise. On that show he quizzed us about a scene that we’re considered a part of. We’ve played with some great local bands under the psych umbrella. I think what’s happening with Aussie psych in its current incarnation is a real positive for all the bands considered a part of this scene. We have a group of bands that we can play with readily, where maybe ten years ago there wasn’t that support.
Psychlops Eyepatch play Goodgod Small Club with Scattered Order and Greta Mob on Thursday August 15.ParanoiseEP available now via Bandcamp and on vinyl.
