Psychic Dancehall / Dreamers

Art Fag

With every relationship comes the creation of a brand new world. When Psychic Dancehall’s Dorian Wartime and Sylvia Innocent took an apartment in a run-down section of San Diego during the rainiest period in the city’s history and set about creating their world together, they’d no idea that fate and the weather would conspire to make that world worth sharing. Their apartment was adjacent to a drag bar where Innocent and Wartime would go every night. Trapped in their little house all day, venturing down to the bar, as well as to the Red Wing, the lesbian bar down the street, was really their only escape. The two felt safe and welcomed by the communities there and related vignettes of their nocturnal adventures back to one another when they went home. These experiences began to transform themselves into songs. Both being musicians, tinkering away with samples and keyboards was the most natural way for the couple to share their moments together and make them into something whole. “A Love that Kills,” a slightly sinister toe-tapper with a Serge Gainsbourg twinge and a reverb-heavy, breathy chorus, is a play between dark and light. “White City” was born from a fortunate mistake—the couple’s next-door neighbor Lexus was locked out of her apartment one night, and came over while waiting to get her keys. Lexus was famous for her karaoke skill, and together the three wrote the song’s hook. Dreamers is timelessly emotional, akin to the experimentation of Arthur Russell or Scott Walker, and like those artists, Psychic Dancehall could have come from any era. It’s music that translates feeling into sound, takes away the particulars of experience so one can make sense of the many parts of life.

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