PSI COM
PSI COM

Dark doesn't exist. If it exists, its facial features are indistinguishable because if it is dark, it shrouds itself in darkness. It is multiple. Dark is an adjective, not a genre, and musical/expressive genres essentially do not exist except for guiding purposes. Someone in the early '80s, especially in Italy, used this term to qualify an aesthetic and musical movement that originated (in reality multicultural in nature, so it seems difficult and simplistic to give it an exact derivation, forcing it) primarily in the United Kingdom, where it went by the name Goth (although someone had already used the term darkwave in the UK). But if for Dark that journalist meant a modern musical version of historical gothic, namely a terrifying sensation of oppression and tragedy, of a dire destiny not, however, plotted by evil spirits in damned, dilapidated castles or by alleged spies who live in the sky, but instead succeeded by the modern uncanny, suburban cold, abandoned factories, grey technical offices, depersonalization, and the fear of solitude, for once, Italian criticism did not unworthily translate something that did not exactly belong to its linguistic and not yet musical culture.
Dark was Metropolitan. Just like from whom it took the germs. Like Punk.

The Psi Com, in some way, belonged to both dimensions of the concept.

PSYCHIC COMMUNICATION or PSYCHIC COMMAND.
Knowledge is the ruination of our happiness.
The road to Psi Com is paved with paradox…
Karuna accept you all.. Silhouette Theme.
A hopeful chant in the wasteland. Still No Answer.

Invitations to "the dancing corpse".
PSI COM was born in Los Angeles in the early '80s. Aaron Sherer, Vince Duran, Kelly Wheeler, Perry Farrell. They had nothing (or little) of Gothic in their music, they didn't use any elements foreign to the instrument park of any other rock group of the era; at most, it was a soundsystem amplified in unusual ways, including the voice. They were Gothic and occult in their profane prayers filled with dark passages and cryptic atmospheres. Macabre iconographic imagery, foreign typography, and pseudo-sciences from a secret initiatory order. The myth of Peripheral was born here. Contemporary and akin (or immediately following) the more properly new wave (and punk-hardcore) foundation of that L.A. art-rock and decadent '80s scene with bands like Kommunity FK, Fear, Savage Republic, TSOL, Black Flag, Dead Kennedys, Love & Rockets, X, Circle Jerks. Indebted to bands like Killing Joke and Christian Death. Semi-legends between Club Lingerie, Anti-Club, Club Lhasa, and the Scream of that era. They shared the stage with Red Kross, Einstürzende Neubauten, Sonic Youth, Meat Puppets, Minutemen, Alien Sex Fiend, managing to perform also within the mythical Desolation Center sessions, in the middle of the desert, somewhere among earthly fumes, near Death Valley. In the beginning, participation in a few compilations (in one they shared the lineup with Die Haut), a demo circulated, some bootlegs. Overall, only a few more things until their story closed. 14 tracks. In the cassette demo Worktape 1 [Right Brain - 1984], sold exclusively at psi com events, Mariska Leyssius was on keyboards, then she disappeared from the lineup.
The sole testimony of their brief passage on the nation's stereos was this EP recorded at Radio Tokyo studios in Los Angeles for Mohini Records (Triple X Records for the CD reissue). Year 1985. Musically... English revivals and reminiscences... A structural scantiness and a sparse rhythmic propulsion, yet more distorted, of the early Cure and the first Joy Division album, exoticism, and tribalism stolen from bands like 23 Skidoo, raw elegance not aestheticized, vampiric charm, and discreet formal rigor like Bauhaus (in the studio). Thanks to the dynamics of their performances, they still managed to develop a distinct musical personality, knowledgeable in the lyrics (Apollinaire, Kundera, I-Ching, Buddha, Book of Lies, Psalm 23), distant from certain stereotypes of Albion due to Farrell's choice of non-vocal atonality; at the time, he lived at the Wilton House with Carla Buzolich, Jane Bainter, and some actors who would end up in Suburbia by Penelope Spheeris. Peretz Bernstein had recently emerged from the Paisley Underground trip, regularly listened to records at Vinyl Fetish, and was in the middle of a zombie-freak phase. Uncontrollable live, according to some testimonies from the era.

PSI COM: Ho Ka Hey is a feverish native battle cry, "The medicine wheel is home and pasture Heals by ecological disaster... Serpent's tale is long and sweet She is, I am what we eat...". A tribal and percussive electric ride that beats the time, stating it's a good day to die. Screams that, despite their nature, manage to hold a kind of grace and refinement in the way of pronouncing words, which sometimes transform into the disharmonious agony of the human condition and into the lament of Human Condition. The malignant mystique of Xiola cuts the ride in half, a sensual and inviting feast of sex and death. Xiola Blue or the Genesis of the Pagan Trinity whose sculptural matter will be the hallucinated cover of esotericism and santeria of Ritual de lo Habitual. "Xiola - Follows the colors in my arm Xiola - Hits me as she braids my brain with acid rain Xiola - Pure are the lips that seal the abyss, she is bottomless, Xiola....". Perry Farrell, Xiola Blue, and Casey Niccoli, the morning and the om of Golgotha. The aesthetic ghost of this time and this intersection of estranged spirits will deeply influence the aura of spirituality and the underground velvet of Jane's Addiction. The motionless plateau of City Of 9 Gates is a mysterious journey, a late-night entry into an organic and expandable city-sprawl, introducing through the portals of the body. The seven Chakras - the underlying Earth. The city is the body. Cavernous echoes, icy winds, isolation, and immaculate breaths will close the album sealed by a disturbing artwork, created by Farrell himself.
"All fall down.. We all fall down.. Where the winds begin.. Ashes....". Winds.

The psychic communication had a brief transmission. Sherer and Duran found themselves spiritually disoriented and distanced from the combo. Apparently, they were on the trail of the Hare Krishna. Sherer would play drums on a couple of tracks from Among My Swan by Mazzy Star in 1996. Wheeler would become a bassist for Dino Paredes of Red Temple Spirit, future executive of American Recordings. Farrell would meet Eric A. along his path, continue making sculptures, and transmigrate his psychic visions from zero stars to the Los Angeles slums.

The limitation of PSI COM never manifested due to the fact that the exact measurement of this unique EP, its thirty-minute duration - 5 tracks, and the disbanding of the band did not expose them to a potential long-playing that over an extended distance could have unveiled all the secrets stolen from the cold musical night of the London period. Despite the similarities and adoration for that scene, however, they managed to retain themselves as an out-of-context object.
The merit of PSI COM was being able to translate with character, escapist poetry, and originality the existential anxieties of European post-punk of those years in the Californian Sun Valley, adapting them to their culture and immediately and appropriately, displacing them, however, in the most suitable environment for these sounds and songs of the earth. An escape into the Mojave desert.
Tango de la Gasolina. Incienso. Gallina Negra. A City of Candles. Novena to the Mosquitoes.

(Diminish the full ~ Replenish the humble)