In this interview, we have a virtual pow wow with UK based Psychic Shakes to discuss the newest project (Psychic EP), influences, and much more.
Full Q&A as well as links and a stream of the EP are below.
Let’s dive a little deeper into You, the artist and your music. What attracted you to this genre(s) or style(s)?
I’m a dude from Southampton, U.K. My name is Max McLellan and I’m behind all the shenanigans involved with Psychic Shakes. My love for lo-fi music in general was kicked off when I was about 15, I was into a lot of early/mid 90s post-hardcore bands like Fugazi, Drive Like Jehu and At the Drive-In, which eventually evolved into a love for post-rock and slowcore bands like Slint, June of 44, Rodan, Bedhead, Carissa’s Wierd and Low. Elliott Smith is a huge influence too. The minimalism and the idea of being able to produce such profound, moving music with so little really inspired me. It made me appreciate that less can sometimes be more, and that you don’t need some huge studio and an army of technicians to make an incredible album, which in turn helped the development of my song writing abilities. Through the years I’ve flirted with surf-rock, jangle-pop, dream pop, dad rock and various other things when it comes to inspiration for writing songs. I don’t really stick to any style for too long, I just like amalgamating all the bands I like into one cohesive sound that I enjoy.
How long have you been creating and sharing your music with the public?
This is my first time doing anything like this. I spent most of my youth just noodling away on a little Tascam DP-004 digital four track, occasionally putting stuff on soundcloud and taking it down again. I never really had the confidence to even play in front of people until I was about 17, but it was always a pipe dream of mine to just record some music and chuck it up on bandcamp for my friends to listen to. So all of this is a learning curve really. The whole thing was written, recorded, mastered in about 4 days; I just spent all my time indoors, sometimes coming home from work in my lunch break to record the vocals. About 2 days after it was put out as a self-release I got in contact with Sam of Hail Hail and he agreed to a digital only release. I’m glad I set myself the challenge, things have been going a lot better than expected.
Who or what influences your playing and/or writing? Also, what motivates you to keep going?
Jimi Hendrix and Tim Collis of TTNG are two of my biggest influences as far as my playing style goes. With a lot of the chords I play I fret the root note with my thumb which leaves my other four fingers free to do as they please; something I picked up from learning Hendrix songs as a young sprog. Tim Collis is an incredible guitarist, he has this amazing twinkly, fingerpicking style which I really dig. As far as lyricism goes it just tends to be whatever’s going on in my life at that time. I try to find a balance between making my lyrics open to interpretation and yet personal to me, but that’s just what I’m doing right now, I’d like to try writing something closer to a narrative that meanders a little bit and just tells a story. I don’t rely much on motivation to be honest, I enjoy making music, and if I’m not creative for a while I get really antsy and stressed. Most of the time I feel like I’m just pissing away my time if I’m not recording or writing.
Were you trying to accomplish anything specific on this new project? Creatively or otherwise?
There was no clearly defined concept or idea in my head that I was aiming for on Psychic. Both of my flatmates were out over the course of the week and there were some more people moving in to my house on the Saturday, so I set myself a challenge. As I had the house to myself and was nervous about them hearing me sing I wanted to write 6 songs and put them on Bandcamp. I wrote 6, but two of them were awful, so I scrapped them. Kings was the first to be written, then Holy Solitude, then In Ribbons, with Stay Close to Me being the last song I wrote, at about half 2 in the morning on Saturday. Kings is basically about struggling to sleep. There are quite a few homeless people that often congregate in a building which is under construction next to my house. They yell really late into the night, and there was one night where it was hot as hell and they were yelling until about 4am before they shut up. The next day I wrote the chorus for Kings.
What was the last song you listened to?
Connan Mockasin/Devonte Hynes – Feelin’ Lovely
Which do you prefer? Vinyl? CDs? MP3s?
I know a fair few people prefer Vinyl, but I just love the accessibility of mp3s even if they’re not quite as warm. They’re just easy and cheaper.
How about this one…. Do you prefer Spotify? Apple Music? Bandcamp? Or something else? Why?
I’ve always preferred Bandcamp, simply because it’s an incredible platform for artists and you can find some real hidden gems. I remember getting Spotify when it first came out and eventually giving up on it when I got my shit together and started using uTorrent and MediaFire. I know it’s bad but at the time I was a poor as shit teenager. I pay for a lot more music now. As far as streaming goes I have been pretty impressed with Google Play as well.
Other than the digital era overwhelming us with access to an abundance of music, what are one or two of the biggest challenges you face when trying to attract listeners to your music?
Probably the fact that I don’t play live is the biggest one, it’s all happened so quickly that I haven’t got anyone together for certain yet. I think not being able to get out there and play local bars and clubs yet is the major thing holding me back in trying to get people to listen to my music. I guess the other would be getting through to music journalists and getting my name on the indie blog circuit. The leg work you have to do as a small artist in terms of PR and self-promotion is actually something I thought I’d hate, but it’s not too bad.
Do you gig, tour or perform? Do you ever live stream? Where can music lovers see you live?
I’ve never played a gig in my life, but that’s going to change very soon…
Where is the best place to connect with you online? Discover more of your music?
The best place to connect with me online would probably be on the Hail Hail Records music page, my EP is up there as a digital only name your price download, so feel free to help yourself to it. I’ve got a few things in the pipeline at the moment so there should be some more Psychic Shakes stuff floating around in the near future.
Any last thoughts? Shout outs? Words of wisdom?
Shout out to Sam Banks for having faith in Psychic and making this all possible, Hail Hail Records are putting out some really fantastic stuff and have been for a while now. Echo Beach are awesome, and I’m really enjoying Tyler Burkhart’s Sweet Spell at the moment, you should check it out.
One quote that did inspire me to just write the album and get over my fear of sharing my music, even if it is a bit corny, was one by Milton Berle: ‘If opportunity does not knock, build a door.’
