Psychocide stemmed from Goldwyn Thandrayen’s (vocal, guitar) solo project, The Goldwyn Experiment, which was based purely on collaboration with different artists. When moving to NYC from Scotland in 2011, he wanted to put together a band that would not only play some of the songs off his solo record but write new ones that together would create its own style. This launched the band’s first single “Street Named Desire,” recorded in 2013. After a few reincarnations and stints as a solo artist, Goldwyn was once again working on his new solo jazz record, “The Goldwyn Experiment -Avenue A,” in San Diego CA as well as materials that would lead up to Alcohol & Bad Decisions. During the mixing session, a guitar solo caught the attention of engineer Christian Cummings, who was then curious to hear more guitar driven songs, thus reviving Psychocide as a full-band project. Goldwyn then moved to Montreal in August 2016 to put together the current line up with Wilson Li (drums), Joey Blais (guitar) and Charlie Chain (bass).
In this interview spotlight, we chat with Psychocide about the new project, navigating the digitized music age, influences and more.
Full Q&A along with links and streams below.
Where are you from and what style of music do you create? (In your own words, not necessarily in marketing terms or by popular genre classifications.)
We make Rock N’ Roll music, as such I think like it has always been we pull influences from Pop, Jazz and Blues and mix it together add an overdrive never distortion and there you have it. If we added Distortion I guess we would fall straight into metal.
What led you down this path of music and what motivates you to stay the course?
We’ve all always liked playing music, so there’s no surprise there that we all wanted to be musicians growing up. I had few songs which were too heavy to be on my solo project and which required a band to make it work, and that’s how Psychocide came together. What keeps us going is putting together a great show to a great audience. It’s a weird energy that is shared between the crowd and us and that is what keeps us going.
How is your new release different than previous ones? Did you set out to accomplish anything specific?
We only had a single out before, so an Album took much more time, and took a lot out of everyone involved, as we did this record in 30 straight days. A lot of the songs were unfinished and lyrics incomplete when we headed in the studio, so we were working pretty hard to get everything together and to have everything sound right.
Yeah we prayed every day that we would get all the songs we wanted on the record, and we did. We would have been bummed if we had ran out of time and not have all the songs there.
Do you face any challenges as an indie musician in a digital age? On the flip side, how has technology helped you (if it has)?
Sometimes we do, I mean focusing on social media is kinda part of the job, so we sometimes spend more time there than making new music, or rehearsing which is a bummer, but you have to do that in order to keep the momentum going. The flip side is it has helped us grow much faster than we normally would have and we are more accessible internationally.
Where can we follow you online and hear more music?
- https://www.psychocide.com
- https://www.facebook.com/psychocide
- http://www.youtube.com/psychocide.ofc
- https://soundcloud.com/psychocide
- instagram : Psychocide.ofc
- Twitter: @PsychocideOFC
- You can Also follow us on SnapChat @Psychocide
Anything else before we sign off?
Yeah keep your eyes out for our new music videos, comic books and YES we are writing new materials already for the next record.
