With the recent release of their single “Pukebox”, Psychedelic Porn Crumpets have not only ushered in the imminent release of their latest album, Shyga! The Sunlight Mound, they have also raised the bar when it comes to music diversity and creativity.
The Perth outfit are known for their eclectic musical output – you only have to look at their name to realize they think largely outside of the proverbial box – and with a trio of singles released from the album which will be released on February 5 vocalist/guitarist Jack McEwan sat down with HEAVY to walk us through the eerily strange but somehow beautiful world of the band.
“We had two concepts,” he explained when talking about the album. “The first concept was supposed to be like a greatest hits album with a fictional character called Norton Gammin. There was supposed to be this old salty sea dog who lived down at the Margaret River and all his music got lost in the ’70s – and he is folklore – so we were gonna do this greatest hits of his records. We had all these mismatched songs and we wondered if it was gonna work as an album. There were metal tracks, there was folk songs and three songs – “Pukebox”, “Mundungus” and “Mr.Prism” – and I was like, what if we take those three songs and group them together and put that into the framework of an album? I was watching loads of supercomputer videos of them predicting Google Deep Dream – have you seen that stuff? – it’s so weird. They are trying basically to predict what it could see, so it’s coming up with something like a forest and then peacock feathers and dogs faces and all this kind of weird shit that it thinks it’s seeing or creating in its brain, but I was like what if we did that as an album where we have a supercomputer – like an A. I – try to make a 70’s rock record? We got really ham on the glitching and warping everything and making it lo-fi so it sounds like a computer made an album that was supposed to be a homage to the ’70s and then narrated with tour stories and bits and pieces via the music. That’s why it’s got all of those glitch elements that work around it. It is kind of a concept but it’s also got that nice theme.”
In the full interview, Jack talks in greater depth about the musical composition of Shyga! The Sunlight Mound, their goals with the album, the title and it’s meaning, how COVID has impacted the band and more.
