Album Review: Psychic Jiu-Jitsu – Psychic Jiu Jitsu (LP)

The nouveau psych rock band, Psychic Jiu Jitsu has released their debut full length, self titled album. The thing about Psychic Jiu Jitsu is that they don’t fit anywhere near a "genre check box" where you can neatly explain and entertain yourself with a number of comparisons to bands of the past, present or future. The album is refreshingly "out there", kicking the ten track collection of songs off with the female vocal infused opening track, Yulia’s Capture at the English Front starring the band’s long time friend and muse, Yulia Gorman. The next track, Dreamachine is another oldie, but goodie deriving from early jams and recordings, becoming sketched out and perfected by a number of live performances of the song.

If you’re looking for a friendly rock record in this album, you’re not going to find it. The next songs: Berlin Space Party, World of Warldorf and Don’t Bore Us are unapologetic, youthful, fast paced and experimental. Anyone who doesn’t have a sense of humor, a love of experimental music and/or a young spirit won’t get these songs and will never make it through the entire album. You’ll get a pastiche of musical styles with the second cluster of songs as Slow Ringing in My Dreams is a funk infused track while Golden Hair of the Sweet Sea Heir is a whimsical country/folk influenced song that moves right into the space ambient sounding song, Something Glistens. Otto Vom is the 9th song of the album and is appropriately (sort of appropriately) 9 seconds long. The final song, Black Marketeers of WWIII is a post apocalyptic track ending the album with an almost 8 minute ode to futuristic doom. You’ll either like the Psychic Jiu Jitsu album or you won’t. It’s not wise to make a chore out of listening to the album, but you should go into it with the determination to venture into uncharted psych noise territory. This is a good debut effort from the band. If they choose to record another album, you should listen to that too, just to see how far out they plan to get over time.