Impala | 2026.15

TMODM: You recently celebrated 20 years of Flowers Must Die. Looking back over those two decades, what has changed most about the way the band makes music?

Rickard Daun: We meet up even less often now. The first year we started the band back in Linköping, Sweden, I moved to Malmö, so we’ve never rehearsed or jammed regularly. But since my move to London, and later Lisa’s move to Chile, it’s even less frequent.

So when we do meet up, we try to make the most of it. We know our instruments and each other better now, so it’s less chaotic and more laid-back. The latter is very obvious, as we tend to be less noisy and loud nowadays. Members step back and listen before adding anything. There’s more space.

TMODM: You’ve said that you have a large archive of recordings and sometimes return to music many years later. What makes you hear an old recording and decide that it’s finally time to release it?

Rickard Daun: Yes, when we meet up, we try to record it, and over the years that has resulted in a lot of recordings—most of them very poor quality, so much of that will probably never be touched. But now and then we find some jams and pick them up again.

After the two “leftovers” releases, Där Blommor Dör on 2LP and the digital Återbruk, I doubt there are many more gems out there. But I would most likely revisit the recordings from the Silence studio nine years ago—the recordings that will be released on Tystnad in September on Rocket Recordings, as well as the self-released Stormen Före Lugnet.

There are a few tracks where I think I could pick out some parts for a more experimental collage release in the future.

TMODM: Flowers Must Die has always drawn on a wide range of sounds—psychedelia, krautrock, folk, jazz, electronics, improvisation. What music has been inspiring the band lately?

Rickard Daun: We’ve always had a wide mix of influences in the band, from black metal to African disco, free jazz to trance techno, and so on. I can’t really speak for the others about what they’ve been listening to lately, and I mainly have my eclectic playlist at work.

Some good stuff I’ve enjoyed live or on record lately includes France, Talk Talk, Ved, Robert Leiner, Deuter, Polé, and Mai Mai Mai.

TMODM: “E’Glynner” apparently changed quite a bit once you got into the studio. What did the piece sound like when you first brought it in, and what happened during the recording that turned it into the finished track?

Spiral Galaxy: “E’Glynner” has always been a sort of “open concept” set opener, with raagini drone in E (natch), with Sara and I vamping on textures/simple figures, and we often count on collaborators filling in the rest of the sonic vibes.

We performed the piece live separately with Drazek Fuscaldo and Jen Powers/Matt Rolin, and really liked the organic sounds they brought to the table. Through overdubs with those four players (and our own), it really transformed into the full-blown, near-symphonic album beginner that we wanted—but never could’ve fully sonically envisioned.

TMODM: Both of you are visual artists as well as musicians, and the album artwork is split between Sara’s front-cover painting and Plastic Crimewave’s lettering and back-cover drawing. How closely do the visual and musical sides of Spiral Galaxy develop together? Does either one ever lead the other?

Spiral Galaxy: Planning the album early on, I had a vague idea for the album cover, building off the pyramid Sara created for the first one. When “musically meditating/medicating,” I often see green light patterns and crudely sketched a sort of triple steeple/mountain/pyramid vision.

We also love the first two Kraftwerk LPs—who else integrated flute/electronics so well, I say?—with the second being my favorite, à la the green cone cover. So Sara went to work painting, adding her own ideas/elements, and later, “green” themes of fauna, the sea, and even Ireland (after a trip there) surfaced on the album.

Also, the final guest lineup was crucial in getting the back-cover art set, aka the “cosmic pyramid” composition of collaborators—so one did sort of feed the other there!

TMODM: Bobby Conn played a substantial role on Spiral Galaxy II, adding treatments, overdubs, percussion and spoken-word elements, while a number of other Chicago musicians also contributed. How did you decide where to open up the music to collaborators while still keeping the core identity of Spiral Galaxy as the two of you?

Spiral Galaxy: Performing live, we have collaborators as often as possible. This is to create the effect of our fuller studio LPs, and to have new musical ideas to bounce off of, as there’s loads of room to improvise in our music.

We’ve collaborated live with everything from a five-piece rock band (!) to a single percussionist, and it all worked surprisingly well. For the LP, we wanted collaborators we had great live sets with, and we KNEW we had to tap Bobby and his partner Julie’s adept violin skills.

Our first LP featured spoken word from Jean-Hervé Peron of Faust, which we previously did live at a show that we played together where Bobby and Julie were in Faust’s backing band. Getting the talented-as-hell vocalist Bobby Conn to do a similar spoken performance seemed very full circle, and perfect!

TMODM: Thresher’s music is entirely improvised, but this collaboration added another wrinkle: Mike Watt recorded his parts long-distance from Pedro while you were in Owen Sound. How did that change the way you listened and responded to one another, and did Watt’s bass ever take the music somewhere you hadn’t anticipated?

Thresher: The long-distance collab was entirely conceived on our end first, without our usual bass player’s input (he was on tape machine instead). This in itself was a strange, uncomfortable experience to tackle, but pushed our band to actively listen for and meditate on a new void space. We found ourselves imagining a ghost bass player or simply just rhythmic low end filling in these apparent blanks, and trying to leave space for the low end and inferred rhythm that were to come.

Watt’s input was then done over the rough mixes, and absolutely shifted the imagined narrative of these pieces to unexpected places. Watt has a very keen sense for the space to be filled, and is like an octopus married to the drum kit when it’s called for. His playing landed very organically in with the feel of the pieces.

TMODM: With six members of Thresher plus Mike Watt contributing to an unwritten piece, what does the “hive mind” actually feel like when an improvisation is working? Are you consciously listening for openings and reacting to particular players, or does it work some other way?

Thresher: The hive mind to us is like a parallel conscious space closely related to language, in my experience. It feels like your own synapses are wired through those of the other contributors. Much like my own memory of child’s creative play. Continuously cycling through harmony and dissonance. Much like meaningful conversation with loved ones that understand your dialect and semantic nature.

There are moments of active listening, no question, but plenty of time spent with a wandering mind too. Like searching for the right words, I suppose, not unlike a meditative practice.

TMODM: The press notes mention that this project was recorded and mixed while record wildfires were raging in both Ontario and California, casting an “omnipresence of harmonious unease” over the music. How did that shared backdrop of ecological crisis affect the music on this album?

Thresher: The wildfires! This really only became apparent to me in hindsight, how much it hung over this effort. I can’t speak to Watt’s impression here, but it was eerily coincidental for me. It really served to feed the theme/narrative of this LP throughout my arrangement efforts.

The record slowly morphed into a scream of existential crisis and our own discontent with our march toward it. Our practice of making music is entropic; as to say, it leans evermore into chaos very naturally, and I suppose we all wrestle with the entropy of our own lives and the global state as well. The more time you spend on Earth, the more you see unfold.

The penultimate train to Clarksville. Five songs recorded last summer at Uniform Recording with Jeff Zeigler, plus one from the basement.

TMODM: I’m planning to play “Astral Tide.” Where does that track fit into the larger story you’re telling across the EP?

Dried and Luminous Ink: The song that fits our EP is “Fallen Trees,” as it explains the reasons why we need to find another planet to live.

TMODM: The story begins with environmental destruction on Earth and turns into a journey through space in search of another world. What led you to use science fiction to explore your concerns about what’s happening to the environment?

Dried and Luminous Ink: This is actually a source of concern for us, as widespread deforestation is taking place in our country, which caused the flooding that recently struck one of our islands.

TMODM: What bands or other music have had the strongest influence on the sound you’re developing?

Dried and Luminous Ink: Our strongest band influences, especially in terms of sound and inspiration, are King Crimson, Slift, Pink Floyd, of course, Travo, and King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard.

TMODM: You only formed Dried and Luminous Ink in 2024, and Astral Tide already feels like a very deliberate statement about what the band is. How did the three of you come together, and did you have a clear idea from the beginning of what you wanted DALI to sound like?

Dried and Luminous Ink: The story is quite simple and fun. The three of us—Dulah (Automation), Robet (Automation), and Wahyu (Lost Sudarso)—had previously played in bands in our hometown, though those groups eventually disbanded.

We crossed paths while hanging out and started discussing a new band project. From the start, we identified Slift as a major inspiration, drawn to their gear and a musical style that is rarely found in our country. We agreed on Slift as our primary influence, alongside others like King Crimson, Travo, etc.

It was that “space-psychedelic” vibe, a sound seldom played in our hometown, that drove us to form DALI (Dried and Luminous Ink).

TMODM: When we talked in 2024, you mentioned a long-distance project with Pepe Abad. That has now become Umma with Pepe and Dr Space. How did the three of you develop Kosmovisionen while working at a distance?

Chino Burga: Of course, the distance was an issue, but I think the most challenging thing was the lack of tempo or metric when we started with Pepe. I just sent him some ambient drone guitars that I had, and he had to manage to put some rhythm to it. That took us some time to get to a point where we found it cool.

We didn’t want to make another motorik psychedelic album, but a chaotic and space one.

TMODM: You and Pepe have played together in La Ira de Dios, while Dr Space brings a different background through Øresund Space Collective. What did Scott add to the musical relationship you already had with Pepe?

Chino Burga: I have known Scott—not in person, though—for over 10 years. Once we even tried to do a project together back in my 3am days, but we couldn’t finish it.

This time, when we completed the album with Pepe, we thought that there was something missing. Coincidentally, Pepe had just moved to Portugal back then and started to jam with Scott—he lives there too—so he asked him to jump in. Scott recorded his part very fast and closed the circle with it.

By the way, I have to give it up to Arlen Thompson, who was just finishing the mixing and had to start again with Scott’s electronics. He was very patient with us.

TMODM: You told me in 2021 that living near the mountains in Lima provides a special energy to your music, referencing how they were worshipped as souls named “Apus” in ancient Peru. Knowing that, the title “Monts” caught my eye since it’s not standard Spanish. What exactly is the word referencing, and how did you try to capture the energy of the mountains in this track?

Chino Burga: So, the original name of the song was “When Mountains Were Temples,” and it was in Spanish. The four songs had long narrative titles, but then after Scott joined the project, I thought it didn’t feel right to have just Spanish complex titles, so I looked for minimal words from different languages.

For example, Ogon, if I’m not wrong, means “fire” in Russian, and if I remember right, Monts is French for “mountains.”

I don’t know if we “catch the energy,” but for sure it’s an ascending tune, as a mountain. Currently I live in a ravine in the countryside of Cusco surrounded by two big high walls of rocks. Imagine that scenario, haha. It’s very mesmerizing, and one feels overwhelmed by it.

I find the walk up to the mountains very ritualistic, even if you are not trying to put a spiritual or esoteric character on it. Just the succession of steps can be very meditative per se.

TMODM: “Poa Kichizi” first appeared on your 2016 Split Electric album with C Joynes. What does the title mean, where does the music come from, and what made you want to return to the piece for Rose Delta Rising?

Nick Jonah Davis: Poa Kichizi is a bit of Swahili slang, a playful way of saying that you are feeling really good. Where any music comes from is a tricky one to answer. When I’m messing around on guitar, there’s this background fuzziness of intention, memories, experience and emotion. It sort of hangs around in the air, and I play around with it. When things take shape, it’s usually because the music lines up with that background stuff.

The mood of the first phrases of “Poa Kichizi” reminded me of past travels in Tanzania, so I leaned into that, and it moved things along. I returned to this tune for the record because I like it, and it felt like it would work out well for starting to work with a rhythm section. Joe and Neal moved it into new territory. It is a real buzz playing with those guys.

TMODM: You originally recorded “Poa Kichizi” on what you described as a neglected 1970s Starway electric guitar, and this tune flowed from it. Does that sort of thing happen very often? How important are the peculiarities of a particular instrument in leading you toward musical ideas you might not otherwise find?

Nick Jonah Davis: I found that Starway guitar around the time I was working on the tunes for Split Electric. It was in bad shape with a warped neck, so I used a capo to try and bring things under control. The guitar actually sounded great, and “Poa Kichizi” arrived straight away.

So, yes, different instruments and their quirks can definitely lead to new musical ideas. Also, the guitar in general gives access to a peculiar and particular world. Any time I spend tinkering about in there is worthwhile.

I read something Brian Eno said about how you can’t just decide, “I’ll have a new idea now.” It’s more that you have to create the conditions where a new idea might come along and see what happens. Insightful. Eno used to play a Starway. I expect his was in better nick than mine.

TMODM: You’ve described Jack Rose as an important influence, but you’ve also talked about wanting to find your place in the solo-guitar tradition. How has your relationship with that tradition changed as you’ve continued making records?

Nick Jonah Davis: Jack Rose was exceptional. Watching him at work blew open some doors in my head which are still swinging on their hinges 20 years later. Of course, he was immersed in the Takoma realm, and led many of us deeper into it.

All these years later, I’m not sure exactly what my definition of “the solo-guitar tradition,” or my possible place in it, would be. The solo guitar music I enjoy most feels singular rather than traditional—someone turning the “one person plays guitar” approach inside out in a way that is completely their own. Dean McPhee, Liz Still, dbh, Toby Hay and, of course, C Joynes are mates who do this thing.

Reflecting on this—and the number of collaborators on the Rose Delta Rising LP—these days, for me, any solo guitar tradition feels more like the point of departure than the destination.

TMODM: Vienna has a rich musical history, but it isn’t the first place I’d expect to find a neo-psychedelic surf band. How did Suntan Club first come together, and how does your environment influence the hazy euphoria of your sound?

Suntan Club: Growing up and living in a landlocked country made us associate the ocean, its sounds, and the ways we can interact with it with something distant and dreamlike. That’s pretty much the essence of what we’re trying to achieve with Suntan Club: creating sonic worlds where we’d like to be.

The winters in Vienna are long and grey, so making songs surrounding that idea helped compensate for that.

TMODM: How did “In My Mind” come together? And what made you decide it was the right way to open the album?

Suntan Club: The record explores introspective thoughts in times of constant fuzz, be it emotional, political, or anything in between. We wanted to reflect the state of being caught between overstimulation and introspection, where clarity feels increasingly out of reach and noise seeps into every layer of perception.

With the opener “In My Mind,” we wanted to start the journey and dive into the landscapes of our own minds, where we can find ease in imagined coastlines, the steady rhythm of waves breaking on the shore, and blissful psychy guitars.

TMODM: Suntan Club formed only in 2023, but the album has a distinctive sound. How did the four of you develop your sound, and what does each member bring to the music?

Suntan Club: Firstly, thanks—really happy to hear that! We started off as a trio. Seba, Bene, and Danny were united by the love of soothing psych rock. When Armin joined as the drummer, we quickly started to pick up on his energy and developed a heavier and fuzzier sound that gets to shine especially in our live shows.

Besides our psychedelic roots in ’60s and ’70s rock, the record also partly embraces ’90s sensibility. As children of that era, we’re drawn to breakbeats and the sound of distorted Roland 303s and 909s, elements that come to the forefront on tracks like “In My Mind” and even more so on “Kiss The Earth.”

TMODM: What’s next for you?

Suntan Club: The lovely thing about our journey so far is that we’ve just gone with the flow. There’s something special about seeing people connect with psych music that doesn’t try to be overly polished or neatly defined, but instead leaves room for spontaneity and individuality.

In a world that often focuses on what separates us, music has a wonderful way of reminding us that there is so much more that unites us. That’s why releasing music independently right now feels like the most exciting thing to do for us.

There are countless places left for us to explore within our minds and the sonic worlds they hold.

TMODM: “Invocation and Ritual Dance of the Electric Nonsense” is the only instrumental on Phantom Fuzzy Exotica. What story, scene, or ritual did you imagine while creating it, and how did the Frank Zappa influence find its way into the music?

Hibushibire: The main riff actually came together during last year’s tour, and we eventually started playing it live before recording it.

I’ve always loved Frank Zappa & The Mothers of Invention, especially the period between 1968 and 1970. When writing this piece, I wanted it to have that chaotic blend of psychedelic music and jazz rock that I hear in those records.

TMODM: When we corresponded in 2023, you said that you wanted to tour Europe. You have now played there several times and are returning for an extensive tour with the new album. Has performing for audiences outside Japan changed your collaborative songwriting approach?

Hibushibire: Absolutely!

Playing outside Japan has been incredibly inspiring for us. Meeting audiences from different countries and experiencing their reactions gives us new energy every time we tour.

TMODM: I understand that the songs on Phantom Fuzzy Exotica came together collaboratively out of the band’s combined ideas following your 2025 tour, and that the album is inspired by “phantoms”—things that appear to exist but somehow don’t. How does that “phantom” concept manifest in the music itself?

Hibushibire: That’s exactly what Phantom means to us.

For this album, I wanted to express emotions and states of mind that are difficult to grasp—feelings that exist somewhere between reality and illusion, whether they’re positive or negative.

Rather than describing those emotions with words, I wanted the music itself to create that feeling.

The other members really liked the direction of the album as well, and I think everyone’s ideas naturally came together to shape its atmosphere.

We never tried to explain the phantom. We simply wanted listeners to feel it.

TMODM: You are based in Helsinki, but the title “Hornsey Bowling Club Folk Song” points very specifically toward North London. Is the club a real place in the history of the song, or did you choose the name because of the particular atmosphere it suggests?

Giglinger: It’s a real place in London where we were playing bingo. It was not in good shape, and it burned down later, and there was a rumor about insurance money. So, the lyrics are about bingo at the end of the universe, and this was a fine place for it.

TMODM: The track carries traces of post-punk, krautrock and psychedelia, yet you call it a “folk song.” What does “folk” mean to Giglinger: a musical tradition, a story connected to a particular place, or simply music made for and about ordinary people?

Giglinger: We found neofolk music and realized that this song has the same elements as neofolk, or at least it was our view of that genre.

TMODM: You have been releasing music at a rapid pace, including a new release on the thirteenth of each month. Has that schedule changed the way you write and record? Do you follow spontaneous ideas, or are these songs pieces of a larger body of planned work?

Giglinger: Our next single will be released on September 13. It’s an edit of our old song. Then we have a little break because we are recording our new material, which will be released next year.

So you can say that our songs are pieces of a larger body of planned work.

TMODM: When we talked in 2023, you described the abandoned oil tank where you recorded Pyramids as almost another member of the band. Retiro Espiritual comes from those same sessions. What did you discover in the recordings when you returned to them several years later?

Gaf & The Love Supreme Arkestra: Yes, Retiro Espiritual comes from exactly the same sessions as Pyramids. We spent several days improvising in the tank with GAF y La Estrella de la Muerte. Some of the stranger and freer stuff didn’t really fit the GAF y La Estrella de la Muerte records, so we just left it there.

Years later, we went back to the recordings and realised that a lot of it could work for The Love Supreme Arkestra. That’s how Ganzfeld, the previous record, and Retiro Espiritual came about.

Sometimes you just need that time—a lot of time, sometimes—to see things from a different angle and perceive things that might not have been appealing the first time you played it. Most of the time, it’s just about listening to that music in different surroundings.

Then, the tank is really part of the music. Being there, completely isolated, changes how you breathe, how you play, how the jams develop. Everything reverberates in that space and somehow ends up in the music. If we’d recorded it somewhere else, it definitely wouldn’t sound the same.

TMODM: The landscape around Taganana seems to be an important part of Retiro Espiritual. How does the geography of Tenerife—the ocean, the volcanic landscape, and the isolation of places like Taganana—find its way into your music?

Gaf & The Love Supreme Arkestra: Landscape has always been very important to GAF. With GAF y La Estrella de la Muerte, Mexico has always been a huge influence—its deserts, the culture, the whole landscape. With Love Supreme Arkestra, it’s more the volcanic landscape and the Atlantic.

Garden Island LP was inspired by the island of Lanzarote and the work of César Manrique. Ganzfeld and Retiro Espiritual, by contrast, are much more connected to specific places in Tenerife, both isolated places with small and quiet villages, a slower rhythm of life, and almost untouched landscapes.

Taganana is probably the clearest example. We sometimes get a house there to chill and play some music, and that’s actually where we first started working on the Retiro Espiritual material—that is, connecting the recordings and the landscape to eventually realise that that was it. It was inspired by this area without us knowing it.

The whole thing, and the picture of the surroundings, came out from the music. And that’s why all the titles on the record come from that area. Every track has got its proper spot there.

TMODM: I’m planning to play “Anagan,” which opens the album. What can you tell me about that particular improvisation, and why did you choose it to open Retiro Espiritual?

Gaf & The Love Supreme Arkestra: “Anagan” is the entrance to the record. The name comes from Guanche, the aboriginal people here, and refers to being between the mountains, isolated. That’s exactly what the place is.

The track is a little more aggressive because it represents the journey there: leaving the busy life and chaos of the city and arriving between the mountains and face to face with the immensity of the ocean. So it’s kind of the entrance to the retreat, both physically and mentally. You leave one world behind and enter another one.

And literally, there is a tunnel you have to cross to get to Taganana, almost on the top of the mountain. Once you get through, it’s a different world, a different time.

TMODM: Your new release Ra's Solar Journey draws heavily on the imagery of the Egyptian sun god Ra and his voyage through the cosmos. What attracted Spring Hill Post Tide to this mythology, and how did it connect with the cosmic themes you've been exploring throughout the band's music?

天宇（Tianyu）: It all stems from my childhood fascination with books about ancient Egyptian culture and art, an interest I still hold to this day. In recent years, video game soundtracks have greatly inspired my work, including Assassin’s Creed Origins, set in ancient Egypt, and the cosmic-mystery exploration game Outer Wilds.

I have also drawn inspiration from Sun Ra and his Arkestra. During this improvisation, the studio atmosphere effortlessly summoned a mirage of a psychedelic desert. It inevitably led my thoughts to the unfathomable, artistically brilliant ancient Egyptian civilisation.

李润晨（Ranchan）: Connections are universal.

TMODM: When we spoke in 2024, you said Spring Hill Post Tide wanted to go deeper into instrumental experimentation. Since then you’ve released a great deal of improvised music. How has improvisation changed the way the band plays together?

天宇（Tianyu）: Absolutely. Since we reclaimed our psychedelic rock roots in 2024, many things have changed. Improvisation now occupies a vital role in our rehearsals, performances and creative process.

In traditional Chinese culture, we call this energy lingqi, or spiritual essence. As written in Guanzi · Neiye: “The spiritual essence resides within the mind; it comes and goes. It is so minute that it contains no inner core, so vast that it has no outer boundary.”

This stands as one of the earliest definitions of lingqi in Chinese philosophy: spiritual essence is no fixed substance. It is a flowing, circulating subtle cosmic energy that resonates with the human spirit. It dissipates when the mind is restless, and gathers when one achieves tranquility.

Lingqi centres on mutual resonance and communion. When distracting thoughts subside, one transcends personal desires and vibrates in harmony with all existence.

Spiritual essence cannot be forced or seized. Only calm stillness allows us to receive it; grasping at it will only make it vanish.

That fleeting state we reach during band improvisation—the moment when “the gate to the universe briefly opens”—is the very essence of lingqi. Art imbued with this energy carries lingering charm beyond its physical form. Vitality dwells even within emptiness, unrestrained by rigid rules.

We will bring far more of this spiritual essence to listeners on our upcoming full-length album THE CITY PORTAL WILL BE OPEN.

李润晨（Ranchan）: In my view, improvisation has profoundly changed the way we play. What we focus on is no longer just the notes, but a state of “庖丁解牛,” a state of hitting exactly the right spot.

袁成鑫（Yuan Chengxin）: It’s like some kind of spider-sense! In that exact moment, I could distinctly feel—it’s coming!!

Much like the energy-bar mechanic in video games. Once the gauge is fully charged, we get to dive headlong into that euphoric flow.

It’s an incomparable, addictive sensation. I’ve tried countless metaphors to describe it, yet words always fall short. To borrow a line from ancient Chinese poetry: true understanding only comes from firsthand experience.

阿颖（Aying）: Improvisational performance places greater emphasis on the immediate surroundings, equipment, audience, as well as the musicians’ fleeting moods, states and emotions. To some extent, it better captures the artists’ emotions in the moment, while opening up access to a wealth of unique musical inspiration.

TMODM: You’ve described some of your recent improvisations as moments when you briefly “open the door of the universe.” When an improvisation reaches that point, what tells you that something special is happening? Is it a particular sound, the interaction between the musicians, or simply a feeling?

天宇（Tianyu）: When I sink deep into improvisation, my eyes stay closed almost the whole time. Occasionally I’ll instinctively open them briefly to sneak a look at everyone else in the band. During performances, all of us wear pretty wild expressions, haha. Yet once we slip into that transcendent improvisational zone, every one of us shuts our eyes, absorbed within the universe we build together through sound.

You mentioned distinctive tones, and that reminds me I played a Bağlama for this improvisation. The Bağlama delivers warm, rustling overtones that craft a constant drone hum. Coupled with the psychedelic instinct inherent to every band member, the studio effortlessly conjured up a mirage of a psychedelic desert.

Speaking of musical chemistry between musicians, our permanent lineup consists of 李润晨, 袁成鑫, 阿颖 and myself. Over these past few years, we have collaborated with more than a dozen wind instrumentalists. We’ve even brought in female folk dancers and female backing vocalists. Surprisingly, the chemistry works incredibly well, as if some mystical magnetic field from a psychedelic cosmos is at work.

Moments when the gate to the universe swings open are fleeting, yet they happen more and more often. Though truth be told, it wouldn’t hold much magic if that cosmic gateway stayed open forever, haha!

李润晨（Ranchan）: The state we enter during improvisation is pure, total, uplifting, and breaks down the distance between people. It can be a Dionysian ecstasy, or it can be a rendering akin to “狂草” in Chinese calligraphy. In short, we each enter our own particular state that transcends self-consciousness itself.

阿颖（Aying）: During improvisation, an emotion within might find its voice through the instrument at hand, or the playing between musicians may lock perfectly into place. I believe it encompasses the sounds of that exact moment, the interplay between performers, emotions, and far more beyond that.

TMODM: In our earlier interview you talked about the influence of Stalker, Solaris, Stargate, and 1970s space music. Do films and science fiction still provide the starting point for your music, or are the newer pieces coming more directly from improvisation?

天宇（Tianyu）: Nowadays, Spiritual Jazz is being embraced with great enthusiasm. Jazz ideologies centred on spiritual transcendence, cosmic awareness and ritual mysticism flow through every note we play. Artworks revolving around ancient myths, mysticism, the unity of all things and cosmic mysteries continually inspire us.

In this era, constant technological advancement erodes our spiritual homelands. We end up confined within boundaries we construct with AI, deepening this sense of cosmic nostalgia. Meanwhile, ongoing conflicts and crises across the globe form an inescapable backdrop of our times. We maintain countless superficial social connections, yet finding kindred spirits on a spiritual level feels next to impossible.

Technology connects time and space, yet drives souls further apart. Conflicts and divisions worldwide serve as a reminder of humanity’s alienation. Grand narratives have faded away, leaving individuals with nowhere to place their spiritual longings.

We ponder this: humanity needs, more than ever, a spiritual bridge linking cosmic vision, the trajectory of civilisation, and the lived experience of every individual.

Music often makes you feel you are never truly alone. Love and peace are not outdated romantic fantasies.

Our debut full-length album THE CITY PORTAL WILL BE OPEN was recorded at Tianti Studio in Yiwu, China, at the end of 2025. It will soon arrive on streaming platforms. We have entrusted France-based WV Sorcerer Productions with both digital streaming distribution and physical record release. Listeners will encounter pieces born directly out of improvisation, alongside carefully composed works that never lose their sense of cosmic vastness and psychedelic atmosphere.

李润晨（Ranchan）: Film is only a starting point; more comes from life itself. Improvisation will be our main form of expression. What improvisation produces is not just notes, but our joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, our individual consciousness, states of being, and the deepest stirrings within. I firmly believe that “music will ultimately manifest in a state that transcends music itself.”

袁成鑫（Yuan Chengxin）: Great sci-fi films, games and novels take root deep inside us. As members of Generation Z, we are inevitably shaped by these outstanding works from the past.

That said, we also develop fresh perspectives and raise questions of our own.

Those deep-rooted influences serve as one kind of starting point, yet they are only one of the contributing factors to creation. Emotional bonds between people, reflections on the world around us, and self-examination—these all function as equally vital points of origin. It is by holding firmly onto all of these elements that our new work has come into being.

阿颖（Aying）: Films, novels and improvisation are all vital sources of inspiration. They also include interesting albums and tracks I have recently discovered. Ultimately, I think it largely depends on one’s own state of being at any given time. A particular state may resonate more naturally with one specific source of inspiration.

TMODM: In our 2024 interview, you mentioned surviving by retreating to nature and avoiding all the “fake shiny-running robot bullshit.” The liner notes for Prayer for a Divine Flood push that even further, lamenting how artificial art ruins spiritual values. Do you view the concept of this “divine flood” as the ultimate disaster humanity is facing, or is it a necessary cleansing required for us to build true spiritual resilience?

Bence Ambrus: Honestly, I don’t really know anymore. Art is pure spiritual values transmitted. Nothing else. There is no spirituality in robots, less and less in humans, even in me.

I guess I’m not a super-resistant monk. I live in this dictatorship called, kindly, society. And this whole system is designed to tear out the ancient human spirit and replace it with all that superficial, useless crap you have to get on all corners, and the unavoidable visual flash that blinds all of us, even those who you trusted before as role models.

So maybe yes. Let’s wish for a real divine spiritual flood, then. One that flushes away all the attention-averting shit, with all its shiny devils, and gives back our soul already taken far, far away.

TMODM: When you, Gergely, and Krisztián were set up in the foresthouse at the very end of 2025, how did you channel those heavy feelings of collapsing materialism and human tragedy into the actual improvisational flow of this album?

Bence Ambrus: Actually, we all had some personal, collapse-close, burned-out periods. We didn’t want to especially create something “great” to change the world with. But while we started to play, I think we all felt like something was really happening above the “three burned-out family men” state.

Something epic.

I heard the kick drum and the bass guitar moving together in a great way, and I knew. So, if the collapsing materialism and this whole human tragedy can slowly transform us from eternal spiritual entities to stressed-out, half-alive ruins in a moldy flesh-and-bone case, maybe we can project it back onto its ugly face with a kick drum and a bass, as the last rebels of oppressed spirituality.

TMODM: Psychedelic Source Records’ output continues to be staggering. When you are constantly jamming in the foresthouse and recording so many great sessions, how do you decide which ones need to be officially pressed to vinyl?

Bence Ambrus: It’s a good question. If it’s well recorded, well played, and short enough, we press it in about the most limited vinyl edition that exists: 100–200 copies.

I used to ask my friend Jeffrey of Echodelick Records to join, and we split the costs. Then he “covers the US market.” We’ve also collaborated with other labels, for example Twisted Flowers from Athens.