Blow Your Mind | 2026.08

TMODM: You describe Shandri as a neo‑psychedelic project that is “documenting the frequency.” What is “the frequency” to you and how do you know when you’ve captured it in a song?

Shandri: To me, “the frequency” is the undercurrents of life; what happens beyond what we “see”. I’m also a psychotherapist and I deal with the unconscious mind on a daily basis, so I often see my music as an attempt to capture the part of the iceberg that lives beneath the surface, so to speak. Not to get too poetic, but I feel like it’s a way to hold on to that greater stream of information that flows through us without us necessarily perceiving it. And how I know when I captured it is essentially if it makes me feel something. Musically, I try to shape it in a way that makes sense to me and that aligns with whatever aesthetic I’m working with at any given moment, but the determining factor is Feeling.

TMODM: You frame Overflow as a “bold, cinematic return” rooted in “transformation, movement, and sonic immersion” after a four‑year period of study and exploration. What changed during that period that made this album feel like a return rather than a debut?

Shandri: So far I’ve had two “periods” musically speaking: Mexico City, and Baja California Sur.

I was born and raised in Mexico City and when I first started doing music a little bit more seriously (back in 2019), I was still living there. Back then, I was writing from a more indie-Rock lens and expressing a different set of experiences, with a slightly more limited knowledge of myself and what I really wanted to write. I obviously knew a lot about psych rock but I wasn’t really “getting it” enough to clearly shape my music in that way.

The second period was when I moved to Baja in 2021- I was exposed to a completely different landscape that challenged me on a personal level and most importantly- a very interesting music scene that made me grow a lot as a musician. When I noticed that big growth opportunity, I decided to pause the writing and just play with as many people as I could, and learn as much as I could from them. That made me realise that Psych Rock (and Psychedelia in general) is a lot more than just a genre, and I started looking at it as a community and a kind of philosophy instead- at least that's my opinion! And eventually I felt confident enough to start writing again. I would definitely not say that I’m an “expert” in any of the things I’m currently doing as a musician, but having that new way of looking at music has encouraged me to do it for the joy of doing and sharing it, above everything else.

Yesterday I released my debut LP and have an EP coming in a few weeks, and a second LP coming by this fall. There was a lot of energy waiting to come out!

TMODM: Your Bandcamp description of Emancipate calls it “a psychedelic anthem about choosing yourself.” Was there a specific moment or realisation that unlocked the song, or did it emerge gradually as you wrote and recorded it?

Shandri: This specific song came from a very clear place, and with a very clear intention. A few years ago I experienced a very intense relationship that required me to confront many aspects of myself and literally emancipate myself from it as a form of self-respect, if you will. The song was a way to synthesise months of overcoming a number of specific hurdles that I carried with me to my relationships (thank god for therapy!). That whole process opened my eyes to the fact that a lot of people are going through similar situations- whether it is romantically or otherwise (with family members, friends, at work, with the government, etc etc etc), and could benefit from reclaiming their self-sovereignty. As usual, one writes from their own experience/perception, and very often for the sake of making sense of their own experience/perception, so if any of this resonates with someone else, it’s a huge cherry on top.

TMODM: You’ve mentioned that some of the songs on Universal Relays come from pretty random sources. When you step back from the album as a whole, do you see any deeper themes or through‑lines connecting everything?

Veradas: The conscious connection to reality. Why or how are we experiencing what we are experiencing? Does it make sense? Should it make sense?

TMODM: You’ve described the songs as coming out of long, free‑form sessions. When you’re in that process, is there a moment where you realize, “this is the song,” or does the structure usually come together later?

Veradas: The structure of the music usually comes quickly. We’re able to see the parts, but the narration of those parts tends to take a minute. As the melody evolves, the other parts move with it until it finally falls into place. More often than not, accidentally.

TMODM: “Hud Money” is about being overwhelmed by technology. When you were writing it, were you trying to push back against that, or just capture what it feels like from the inside?

Veradas: It is a sense of being overwhelmed by the sheer onslaught of what could be useful information, but it is obscured through the algorithmic lens to deny us any true free will of thought. Also, the song in itself is a rebellion against that: “we can have fun, who's the wiser?”

TMODM: Tadpoles returned after a 25-year hiatus with Make Believe, and now the Smoky Remix version pushes those tracks into even more atmospheric territory. What made you want to revisit these tracks so soon after the original EP, and what did the Smoky mixes reveal about the songs?

Tadpoles: Well, I started Tadpoles so long ago…in the 80’s as a kind of home studio solo project for my own initial adventures into songwriting on a cassette 4-track, and eventually moved to NYC and found David Max and Nick Kramer as core partners to turn it into a “real band.” But, I had always maintained leadership and oversight of our studio recordings and final mixes. With our band reboot after 25 years, both Nick and David gained so much experience as musicians and in making recordings that I wanted to let them be in the driver’s seat on our new material this time. Nick is great friends with Pete Kember / Sonic Boom and had worked with him on previous projects and suggested that Sonic mix this first EP. Frankly, as much as I respect Sonic and his work, it was a bit uncomfortable for me to not be present during the mixes to direct the mix…and I kind of consider Sonic’s mix to really be the “remix” and the mix I did (the Smoky mix) to be the Tadpoles’ mix of the EP, ha. Control freak, I guess. It is what I intended…i went for lots of space and depth, and the guitars I layered are like a puzzle that really I had to put together how I intended. Wanted them to sound more like a band playing together. So, no knock on the Sonic mix at all…he and Nick, particularly had a vision for that version of the EP, and I had a related but different vision that I just had to see through. David and I added new parts to each song as well…so, the differences are not just in sound…but instrumentation as well.

TMODM: You’ve described the current Tadpoles as more of a studio band, able to explore sides of psychedelic music that weren’t as practical in the 1990s. How has that changed the way you approach the music?

Tadpoles: With David living in Basel, Nick in NYC, and me in Sacramento, the only way we could exist as a band in any feasible way is as a studio band. However, our long history of working together in the 90’s gave us a common language that didn’t take long to relearn and reinvent. We all write and had lots of seed ideas that we posted up on our Slack site, and we would go back and forth, and comment on each other’s additions, until the nature of the song revealed itself. Of course, in any creative partnership, you run into issues where something isn’t working for someone and have to navigate that sensitive terrain. We were successful more often than not with that, and out of about 45 songs seeds that were worked on, we have finished, mixed and mastered about 28 that are ready to go. In the 90’s, we couldn’t afford a lot of studio time, so we typically rehearsed so well that we could quickly get our tunes recorded in the recording studio with minimal overdubs. Now , with digital home recording, that’s not an issue …we have as much time as we need…and can explore things…particularly with atmospheric guitars, synths, vocal effects and arrangements that we just couldn’t do back then. It’s fitting in that that trajectory of “becoming a studio band” is a common path leading to more experimentation in rock history, I think.

TMODM: The EP closes with 'Brights and Shades,' an instrumental featuring violinist Gillian Rivers. How did that collaboration come about, and how did strings fit into what you were going for?

Tadpoles: I think that the addition of live strings is in line with what I mentioned in the previous question…we have been in an “anything goes” mindset on our new material. Nick is friends with Gillian, and asked her to help on that song…one of Nick’s seeds…and she provided a really evocative and beautiful strings performance that also fits the mood as an EP closer…I really wanted the EP have a specific flow and function as sort of a manifesto for where Tadpoles are now, in 2026, and as preview of what is coming.

We have a 14 song album, called Timeseeker, finished that we are really eager for people to hear…there is a song on that with live strings as well that’s really lush called “Golden Flower”. But first there is another EP called On A Silver Sun, that is a collaboration with Anton Barbeau, a fellow musical psychonaut, that I met here in the Sacramento area over the past few years. I’ve collaborated with on some of his material , live and on his most recent album , “Klaust” …and he worked with us on the EP, on a couple of originals and with two Beatles-related tracks…It’s All Too Much and John Lennon’s “India India”, done Tadpoles-style. Hope to have that out next January.

TMODM: On the Bandcamp page you describe this EP as “a little free taste” of a new but “always psychedelic” sound. What does psychedelic mean to Kurandera specifically? Is it a sonic thing, a lyrical thing, a feeling, or something else?

Kurandera: When we describe our music as psychedelic, for sure we get inspiration from 60s and 70s music. We are open to exploration and our references are 60s music like Velvet Underground or 13th Floor Elevators, Spacemen 3, but also the minimalistic sound of krautrock like Can or Neu, and also the sound of Throbbing Gristle, and whatever suggests an hallucinogenic mood to us.

TMODM: The title of your EP is Todas las Brujas del Mañana (All the Witches of Tomorrow). Where does that image come from, and does the witch figure carry a specific meaning for the band?

Kurandera: The name in Spanish, Todas las Brujas del Mañana, is like the translation of "All Tomorrow's Parties" from the Velvet Underground, but using witches. This EP is dedicated to the muses that inspire us, just aesthetically.

TMODM: The record credits several musicians contributing different guitars, harmonica, live bass, and additional voices. When you’re building these long psychedelic tracks, does the music grow out of structured compositions, or is it more about improvisation and capturing a particular moment in the studio?

Kurandera: We are working on a full album that will be released by the end of the year.

TMODM: "Black Rabbit" feels like a great example of what you call "droney bliss." The notes for this release mention the album evolved over nearly five years. How did this track (or the album generally) change over time?

The Black Heart Death Cult: Our next (3rd) album “Bad Levitations” started out with a demo I recorded at home during the first Covid lockdown. The track is called “Far off distant shores” & the demo is the last track on the “Black Rabbit” release.

I really wanted to hone in on a real dark heavy shoegaze vibe (similar to Black Rainbow) for the album & that demo was the trigger for it all. We work by writing then recording 3-4 tracks at a time then if something doesn’t come out as envisioned or doesn’t sound like will fit the album then it generally gets scrapped. Then we move on to the next bunch of tracks.

As the writing and recording rolled on it appeared to me that the lyrics were taking on a really similar theme. The theme of someone struggling with the pitfalls of life, the sanctuary of heroin as a painkiller & the eventual downward spiral that often ensues. All pretty bleak stuff but I’m not really into love songs that much. So I think in the end the album has ended up as a kind of grunge rock opera of sorts. The story centres on our heroine Alison & “Alison” is the opening track on the album & is a 5 minute slab of mind melting fuzzed out grungegaze.

As soon as I wrote the chords to “Black Rabbit” I knew it would be on the album. The poppiest moment on the album if you could call it that. There wasn’t anything like it in what we had recorded so it filled a hole so to speak. Pretty much everything I write starts as a chord progression then a vocal melody gets added & some rudimentary mumblings / words to go along with. This then gets taken along to jam with the band. All came together pretty quickly for “Black Rabbit” with the lyrics completed just before tracking.

TMODM: Melbourne has produced a remarkable cluster of heavy psych bands over the last decade or so. Do you feel like there's a genuine scene there or is it more that a bunch of like-minded bands happened to emerge from the same city independently?

The Black Heart Death Cult: (Note: No answer was provided for this specific question in the raw text.)

TMODM: What's next for you?

The Black Heart Death Cult: We are in final stages of mixing & should have the album out in the back end of this year with some UK/ Euro touring on the horizon in first half 2027.

TMODM: Looking at the tracklist for Meaningless Monuments, almost all the song titles (like ‘Błędów’, ‘Brno’, ‘Novo Mesto’, and ‘Mollerussa’) are real places spread across Europe. How did Mollerussa and these other specific locations become the anchors for the album? Do these places represent actual stops on your touring journeys, or are they symbolic landscapes?

Occult Hand Order: It's indeed places where some things happened to us as a band that bonded us closer together. It's all the core memories we gathered through the years.

TMODM: The album title Meaningless Monuments suggests a tension between significance and emptiness. How does that idea play into the way you approach developing the music across the record?

Occult Hand Order: It's really about the absence of purpose in life. I mean, you can do lots of things on this Earth, but it will eventually vanish. Sometimes you wish those things would vanish and they don't. We try to bring that energy to songs. Its meaningless, it's just the moment. Feel it.

TMODM: Your Bandcamp bio describes Occult Hand Order as balancing “crushing weight and cosmic elevation, ritualistic tension and introspective drift.” On Meaningless Monuments, how do you decide when a song needs to stay locked into a slow, hypnotic structure and when it needs to open up into something more expansive?

Occult Hand Order: Composition was really intuitive for this record. Even more now with Clem that joined us recently as a second guitarist and synth, he added so much and we just let it happen. And for now it's awesome !

TMODM: You’re both a pastor at Freedom Church and a musician deeply rooted in 1960s‑inspired psychedelic rock. How do those two parts of your life influence each other, if at all?

The Lemon Clocks: I find being a pastor of a church and the making of music to all be one. A guitar solo and a spoken word sermon can both have the same vibe. It's truly improvisational if you let the Spirit lead.

Since music is a big part of most churches, it can really be wonderful if tradition does not contain it. The reason our church is called Freedom, is that where the Spirit of God is there is Freedom. This applies also to the making of music. For centuries the traditional church contained music mainly to the pipe organ. I believe all forms of music can be expressed in the church. If the heart is pure, let the river flow.

TMODM: Looking at your Discogs page and the Lemon Clocks releases, the volume of music you’ve created over the years is remarkable. What drives that level of productivity, and how has your creative process evolved over time?

The Lemon Clocks: My inspiration for creating such a high volume of music comes from the Spirit of God. I often hear the music in my head and heart long before ever picking up an instrument or pressing the record button in the studio. The music is already there in the spirit. I am just releasing something from the spiritual realm into this world. The creative process therefore has remained pretty much the same over the decades. I am here to do this as part of my purpose. Good music makes a huge improvement in our daily lives when we let it in.

TMODM: The Cellar Tapes release captures you playing live in Wales. What was that experience like, and how does performing in a setting like The Cellar shape the music compared to your studio work?

The Lemon Clocks: The experience of The Lemon Clocks playing at the Cellar in Wales was absolutely wonderful. It actually felt like a church experience for me. The people there are so kind and friendly, and I could feel a "Whole lotta love" in the room! In fact, I slipped in a snippet of that song during one of my guitar solos. I am grateful to all at Cellar Tapes for releasing this concert. We hope to return there again sometime. In the meantime we have the memory of a truly fabulous experience.

TMODM: This single (It's Too Late/I'm Rowed Out) pairs an original track with a cover of "I'm Rowed Out." When you're working on your own material like "It's Too Late," what are you trying to carry forward from that era, and where do you find yourselves pushing beyond it?

The Crystal Teardrop: The 1960s is undoubtedly our fave era for not just music, but fashion and films. However we are not to entrenched in it that we dont like other things and we pull in influences from a wide range of areas. The experimentation and wide eyed view that anything could happen is something we wish there was more of today and something we like to try and pull from that era. This gives a lot of scope as the musical landscape changed so drastically even between 1964 and 1969. So we cherry pick from maybe an upbeat freakbeat type tune that wouldnt sound out of place in 1965/66 to a more experimental heavier 1968 type song and it all comes together to make The Crystal Teardrop sound.

Obviously there have been areas that have improved from that time which makes things easier whether thats in terms of recording or playing live. In terms of influences we dont just stop in 1969 and the band all listen to everything after that up to the present day as despite the general apathy towards modern music there is still a very large number of great bands out there at the moment.

TMODM: You recorded the debut album completely to tape at Tilehouse Studios with Liam Watson. Now you're a year on from that with a new single, how did that experience change how you approach writing or performing live?

The Crystal Teardrop: Liam really helped us with structuring songs and making songs succinct when they need to be. We think we carried that on with this new record. We try to keep things lean and not over-use a part. It keeps it fresh. The second album (like a lot of bands follow ups to their debut)has been written and recorded a lot quicker than the first. Although that has been challenging at times its also been really exciting and we've rised to the challenge and we hope people who liked the debut are going to be blown away by the second.

TMODM: You are currently on an extensive tour with Love with Johnny Echols and The Pandoras. How has playing live, particularly this tour, influenced the way you approach your songs? Do they change much once they’re in front of an audience?

The Crystal Teardrop: Not massively. Apart from a couple of songs where we are bit more experimental and try to mix it up a bit, most songs are fairly faithful to the recorded versions. Thats a good thing as with Psych Garage Punk its a case of short sharp songs. In our more psychedelic numbers we get to stray off the path a bit! The gigs with Love and The Pandoras were highlights of our career so far. Not only were we massive fans of these acts before the tours, we also got to watch them night after night. On top of all that, both bands were the nicest bunch of people who made us feel very welcome. We're still on cloud 9 after it if truth be told.

TMODM: Live Evil brings Dope Purple together with Kawabata Makoto. What was it like collaborating with him, and what did his approach add to the Dope Purple sound in that setting?

Dope Purple: Kawabata Makoto was like a highly mobile tank. While adapting fluidly to Dope Purple’s performance, he unleashed an overwhelming amount of power with both precision and instinctive freedom. Even though we were constantly overwhelmed by his presence and energy, it also felt like we were charging through the venue together with that tank at full speed.

What we learned from his playing was not small technical tricks or virtuosity, but the importance of raw human power itself. In a way, it felt similar to Aristotle’s idea of “Virtue.”

TMODM: Your notes describe Dope Purple as an ‘interaction of energy.’ When you’re in the middle of a set like this, what tells you the music has crossed from performance into that shared state you’re after?

Dope Purple: That night, the venue was enveloped less by “rock” in the conventional sense and more by a shared state created through the soundscape of two noise guitars.

TMODM: You mixed the recording specifically to commemorate the tour, and the set includes the previously unreleased ‘LxOxVxE.’ When you listened back, what did you want the record to preserve from that night, and what did you intentionally push forward in the mix to make it feel as intense as being there?

Dope Purple: When mixing this album, we tried to focus on recreating that trance-like state generated by noise, while also reconstructing it into something that could still be enjoyed as a rock record.

Of course, it’s difficult for a mix alone to perfectly reproduce the physical sensation of that night. But if someone plays the record at maximum volume in a small room through a record player, I think they can get surprisingly close to the feeling we experienced there.

TMODM: When you’re writing or recording, are you consciously pulling from specific influences, or is it more about reacting to each other in the moment and letting the identity emerge naturally?

AUTOHAUs: When we record, it’s mostly about reacting to each other in the moment. Sometimes we’ll talk beforehand about a particular mood or direction, but things rarely follow a fixed plan. Usually we’ll start by choosing a key - Ali will kick things off with a drone, and we’ll build outward from there.

Ali (electronics) and I (Adam - guitar) tend to layer textures and sounds off each other because we work from a similar sonic palette, while Kevin (bass) and Magnus (drums) naturally fire off each other and lock into grooves together. I’ll often pick up on Kevin’s bass lines and echo them through the guitar, while Magnus usually shapes the dynamics and flow of a track - we tend to follow where he takes things.

The whole process is very organic and comes from years of spending long hours jamming together in the studio. We all bring different influences into the room, but there are never really any preconceived ideas before we start playing. Live, it’s often even more improvisational - sometimes we build entirely new pieces in the moment, other times we pull from an old riff and take it somewhere unexpected. One upside for people coming to our shows is that they’ll never get exactly the same experience twice.

TMODM: The title "You Know Nothing About Cars or Martial Arts" has this sharp, slightly surreal edge to it. Where did that concept come from, and do you see it more as commentary or just following a strange idea wherever it led?

AUTOHAUs: Unusually for us, “You Know Nothing About Cars or Martial Arts” is actually a cover version - originally by the former London noise outfit Dethscalator. The recording/ album comes from a performance celebrating the life of our friend Kevin “Philly Kev” Morpurgo, who passed away in 2023. Kev had played in Dethscalator during his time in London, so covering one of their tracks felt like the right tribute.

Our own song titles usually carry some kind of commentary or reference point - often drawing from music, film, art, or literature. Because we don’t use lyrics, titles become another way of setting a mood or hinting at an idea. Even the album title, Shoot the Moon, references Kev’s favourite late-night dice game, “3’s”.

TMODM: You teamed up with Johnny Halifax on this record. What sparked that collaboration, and what did he bring into the mix that changed or expanded the AUTOHAUs sound?

AUTOHAUs: I’d been a fan of Johnny since his Honkeyfinger days and had seen him play at Bar Nothing in Margate - Kev’s bar - a few times. Ali and I later caught him at the Tom Thumb Theatre in Margate as part of the AMBIT POP / SAVAGE PENCIL tour. We got chatting afterwards and thought it would be great to do some shows together.

Since then we’ve played with The Invocation several times in both Margate and London. Johnny was also a friend of Kev’s, so it felt completely natural for him to be involved in the memorial event. When we talked about covering the Dethscalator track, he was immediately up for contributing vocals. He also knows Dan Dethscalator (Dan Chandler, now of Sex Swing), so he was able to get the band’s blessing for the cover.