"Joyous" (8/10) - Uncut
“Uplifting and hugely experimental” – Clash
“Psapp are certainly not afraid of using some really offbeat ingredients in their creation of catchy, danceable tunes.” – Dummy
"What Makes Us Glow is really a collection of expertly crafted and arranged songs... with their unusual, seemingly random sounds, mature themes and memorable melodies. (8/10)" - The Line of Best Fit
Having recently released their first album in four years ‘What Makes Us Glow’, Psapp are delighted to unveil their new video for single ‘Wet Salt’, taken from the record.
Speaking about the track, the duo said "Wet Salt is a song about the dirt, greyness and magic of city life. It’s full of bustle, colour and magic. It’s also about the internal battle where you yearn for the quiet green of the countryside but somehow can’t live without the mess and madness of a city. We alternated between Hackney and a German castle in the country to record this record.”
“For this video, we wanted everyday rubbish and litter to be elevated into something magical and strange to reflect the sentiment of the song. It tells the stopframe story of a hapless but intrepid paper shape on her journey through a hostile city, and the strange band of litter creatures she befriends on her way.”
‘What Makes Us Glow’ is a vast hypercolour psychedelic whirl of an album, with intricate orchestration, layered vocals and a pioneering spirit. These songs thrum and buzz, they glow.
Scored with home built instruments, ‘What Makes Us Glow’ is bursting with swampy drones of recorded ambience and plenty of raw sounds. Psapp relish in combining unusual musical elements, this record includes Galia’s rhythmic snores, boxes of writhing mealworms, their homemade boneaphone – a marimb made from bones – and the groans of milk-laden cows alongside the more standard instruments: piano, violin, oud and organs.
Lyrically it is an exercise in emotional stocktaking. These are songs of attachment, detachment and the slow realisation of what is essential. This is not the sound of a band finding their way; it is the sound of band having arrived at their destination. There is a powerful sense that they are in full control of their sound and revelling in the possibilities.
Some bands disappear, either dissolving into a mess of acrimony or slowly drifting apart as life tugs them in different directions but for Psapp, the pull to continue creating together conquered distance and all the complications of being alive.
While the drivers for its creation may have changed - out with all nighters, in with daylight and an appreciation of family and dedicated musicianship - the inherent joy of being together and creating magic little songs still shines through.
Psapp are eternally glued together whether they like it or not.
This is What Makes Us Glow.
Psapp are, and always will be Carim Clasmann and Galia Durant.
‘What Makes Us Glow’ Tracklisting:
1. Life Hums
2. Wet Salt
3. The Cruel, The Kind, The Bad
4. Seven
5. That’s The Spirit
6. In The Black
7. Everything Belongs To The Sun
8. Bone Marrow
9. Your Hot Knife
10. The Well and The Wall
11. What Makes Us Glow
12. In and Out
Links:‘
Wet Salt’ video on YouTube
Order ‘What Makes Us Glow’
‘Seven’ live session on Youtube
‘Your Hot Knife’ live session on Youtube
'Everything Belongs To The Sun' on Soundcloud
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