Psychic by DARKSIDE takes you on a mystical journey through time and space. I never had been one to enjoy music without lyrics, but this album has a way of sucking you in and slowing you down, making you forget about what you once thought music should be.
The entire album feels like it tells a story, from start to finish. By beginning slow and dark, picking up the pace and bringing you to the edge with harder and faster beats—building until it hits its peak and then finally taking you back down again into its eerie depth—the album feels like a perfect cycle of birth, life and death. The most impressive part is that Psychic not only tells this cyclic story as a whole, but it also tells a miniature story just the same inside each song. DARKSIDE also used instruments and sounds in this album that I’ve never heard before, like liquid jazz guitar and space-radio crackle, but at the same time utilized common instruments in completely new ways to give them new sounds and feels.
I was wary when I first began listening and heard no lyrics because I’m not the type of person who can listen to an entire album of just instrumentals. However, after the first song, the album unwound me and mellowed me out, making me feel like I was floating through space with nothing but the dark, thick sounds encompassing me like a warm, heavy blanket on a cold winter night. I slowly started to chill out from my hectic day, and I could feel my body and mind relaxing as the songs continued.
Just as I got used to the wordless, haunting album and began to sink into the horse hoof-like drum beat of the third song, “Heart,” a soft, haunting voice came over the background like a mysterious ghost and blindsided me. As quickly as it came it disappeared, and then continued to fade in and out over the rest of the song and the next.
The next time you’re stressing about exams or fed up with a roommate, take a few moments and put your headphones in with Psychic on the other end. Your mind will clear and any problems you thought you had will hide away while you zone out to the hypnotizing beats DARKSIDE conjured in this mesmerizing piece of art.
Rating: A-
