The Cosmic Dead
Psych Is Dead

'My Name is Nobody' (1973) is often mistakenly attributed to director Sergio Leone, who indeed collaborated on the making of the film but in the role of producer, while the direction is in every respect by the skilled Tonino Valerii, who had already directed a masterpiece of the genre like 'Day of Anger' (1967).

Probably everyone has seen this film and knows the plot, but I will still provide a brief summary to convey the concept: it's the end of the nineteenth century and a legendary bounty hunter, Jack Beauregard (Henry Fonda), has now decided to retire and leave for Europe, when a young vagabond who calls himself 'Nobody' (played by Terence Hill in one of his typical roles) convinces him to undertake one last feat before his good retirement. That is, to single-handedly defeat the 150 riders of the Wild Bunch.

It is a film with ironic tones but at the same time full of a certain pathos and drama and that in the actions and then in the retirement of Jack Beauregard, paints the end of an era and the transition from one historical phase to another. But the 'end' of Jack Beauregard is also the end of a myth.

It is the end of the frontier myth and what we have come to know as the 'Wild West', as Jack Beauregard aka Henry Fonda himself will declare at the end of the film in a letter addressed to his friend:

'By the way, I also found the moral of the story your grandfather used to tell, yes the one about the little bird that the cow covered with dung to keep it warm and then it was pulled out and eaten by the coyote. It's the moral of the new times: not everyone who dumps shit on you does so to harm you, not everyone who gets you out of the shit does it for your own good. But above all, when you are in the shit up to your neck, keep quiet. So, someone like me must leave.'

These are bitter words, the words of a person who understands that no matter how much he was the best at what he did, his time has now passed and only curiously we must consider how this film somehow also marked the end of the 'Spaghetti Western' film genre or at least the transition to a new phase of the genre, of which Terence Hill was one of the main protagonists with the two films about Trinity.

I have variously written and we have discussed several times about neo-psychedelia and in particular about The Cosmic Dead, the group from Glasgow, Scotland, made up of Omar Aborida, Lewis Cook, Julian Dicken, James T Mckay and how they have constituted and continue to constitute one of the most powerful realities in the neo-psychedelic music scene of our continent and especially with regard to the proposal of long and endless kraut-rock drone sessions, with the determination of a sound halfway between space ambient and some 'doom' sound like Swans.

It has been rightly noted how this type of sound can at some point perhaps tire the listener, given its repetitive nature and the simple fact that what had exploded as a niche phenomenon, the neo-psychedelic movement, over time has become something widespread and perhaps in some cases even overused: in this sense The Cosmic Dead certainly do not constitute a unicum and their sound can in no way be defined as unprecedented or something original.

The fact that they are also particularly prolific further discourages many listeners: the more demanding ones because they wonder, I imagine, how a band can consistently deliver quality records in such a compulsive manner; others simply because there is so much to listen to that in the end, The Cosmic Dead, album more or less, who cares.

It is possible that the protagonists themselves have realized all this, and with this album, ideally titled 'Psych Is Dead', they evidently conduct a sort of ideal sacrificial rite at the end of which, through what we can consider a sort of 'transition' from one phase of their artistic existence to another, they emerge from the waters of the Mediterranean Sea as a completely new formation.

I speak of the Mediterranean Sea because this album has the peculiarity of having been recorded right on the shores of the 'Mare Nostrum' and more specifically in Sardinia at the home of musician Luigi Pasquini, who also participated in the recordings as an additional member of the band, in addition to handling the recordings directly (the mastering, however, is by James Plotkin).

Divided into three tracks, 'Psych Is Dead' (released on April 28th by Riot Season Records) opens with the twenty-five minutes of psychedelic jam-session of 'Nuraghe', a sonic journey that we could define in some way as turbulent and disconnected on the ocean floor, with time undergoing a sudden acceleration at the finale, dragging the listener into what is a real whirlpool of echo-drone sound and stormy noise frenzy.

The title track is, on the contrary, a more evocative episode, a sort of oriental litany mixed with sounds from a distant past and the echo of legendary Homeric creatures that populated the Mediterranean Sea. The sound of the synth is in any case dominant, and its modulations dovetail perfectly with the reverberations and 'fuzz' of electric guitars, the powerful sound of the drums... up to the third track of the album, '#FW', which indeed in its boldness of fifteen minutes and in which all the sound components are pushed to the maximum power, constitutes an episode of acid and droning psychedelia reminiscent of those already referred Swans moments ('The Seer').

What else to add? Is 'Psych Is Dead' truly a kind of rite through which this band aims to surpass what has been done so far and enter a new phase? Indeed, some things, like the oriental suggestions of the title track and the drone pushed to the maximum power of '#FW', constitute a surpassing of what has been done so far and even compared to the first track of the album, which I would define more in the band's standard. However, it is difficult to understand if and how much this type of development, that is, pushing even more on the accelerator, can in any way be fruitful for a conscious growth of the group or not.

Nonetheless, I doubt that with this work the Glasgow quartet intended to bid farewell and then decide to disappear from the scene like the old Jack Beauregard. The question is whether we should or can actually consider this genre as having exhausted itself or if there are escape routes and if in case these have already been proposed in this work or not. Nonetheless, in the meantime, by listening to this album you can still notice some components that remain interesting and that can indeed be properly defined as 'epic' for what is the truly overwhelming and irresistible sound of The Cosmic Dead. This is undeniable, and we take note of it while at the same time noting in our notebook the fact that perhaps 'Psych Is Dead' a bit like Massimo Troisi did with the priest of Frittole who announced to him that sooner or later he would die, and we are here now waiting to see what will happen. Sooner or later, inevitably, a new era will begin.