Sound & Vision <br> with The Psychotic Monks

French four-piece, The Psychotic Monks, returned earlier this year with their first track in three years, Closure – a noisenik masterpiece that served as the first teaser for new album, Private Meaning First, released today on FatCat Records.

The band’s sometimes-stalking, sometimes-stratospheric sound creates an aura of atmospheric tension that can be felt across Private Meaning First, with The Psychotic Monks’ embracing of experimentation and accidents bringing a free-thinking feel to the boundary-pushing album.

The band spoke to Secret Meeting about some of the inspirations behind their approach…

Three albums we love

Portishead – Third

It’s an album that has been following us for a very long time, on a personal basis, but which we’ve talked about and listened to together.  
For us it is very radical, and it leaves us very free in the interpretation we can make of it. It’s something we like very much, and we try to put it into the conception of our music, and above all, the lyrics are wonderful.

Girl Band – Holding Hands with Jamie

The discovery of Girl Band was a turning point for us. We really had, as many people probably do, the feeling of  ‘how the fuck is it possible to make this music ?’ 
This album is a reference in terms of sound, intention and aesthetics. Some kind of futuristic music.

Protomartyr – Relatives in Descent

This album inspires us enormously especially through the lyrics of Joe Casey. It is a record that can be listened from the beginning to the end and that gives the feeling of living an entire story. It had accompanied us a lot when we were recording our album and on the road when we were touring.

A film we love

David Cronenberg – The Naked Lunch

All of Cronenberg’s work accompanied us a lot during the conception of the album. For us it is a work on matter, transformation, and strangeness and it inspires us a lot. This film in particular, his vision of William S. Burrough’s work, which is also a big inspiration for us. Its kafkaian atmosphere helped us to find meaning in the arrangement of the songs and texts.

A book we love

Albert Camus – Le mythe de sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus)

Reading this book was an immense surprise, an opening of the mind, a comfort. It brought us a great desire to transform what we live, that nothing is binary. A bit like a sequel to Hermann Hesse’s books.  We will discover other books that speak to us so much and we can’t wait to read them.

One song that’s important

David Bowie – Blackstar

David Bowie is an artist we love very much and who gives us a lot of strength in his ability to constantly renew himself as an artist. The whole of his discography is so vast and varied that new sources of inspiration and ideas could constantly be drawn from it. We have the feeling that Bowie creates a new character with each record, and at the end of the album he kills this character to create a new one. 
Blackstar is his last story, as a kind of balance sheet. Every time we listen to this record we find something new.

If you’d like to support us by subscribing to our zine, click here – it’s just £6 a year for four copies (inc p&p).

 

Want to keep up to date with all our latest pieces? Follow us on social media…