Exclusive Interview: Psychic Bloom Ponders On
Updated: Sep 15, 2021
Eager to share tunes to a wider audience, Iranian garage rockers, Psychic Bloom are on their way toward making their dreams a reality.
The Tehran-based psych rockers have been making waves in the underground community since their self-titled release in 2017. Rather than spending money on studio time, guitarist/vocalist Hashill Ah followed the path of many other modern DIY artists by deciding to record the project in his bedroom. Without the luxury of a localized music scene, Hashill looked outward in efforts to expand his horizons which is how he came across Weiner Records.
Acting as an offshoot from Burger Records, Weiner Records is a go-to spot where up and coming artists or audiophiles can independently produce projects, so Psychic Bloom took the opportunity and used the platform to release their self-titled on cassette. Soon later, Burger Records reached out and offered them a deal to record a new album. As the pieces of their career fell into place, Psychic Bloom unveiled another supply of spaced out jams in 2019 for their album, Mysterious Temple.
Although Psychic Bloom's plans to come to the US and perform for their first time were hindered by unforeseen circumstances, they still have high hopes to make their US debut later this year at a variety of Burger showcases such as Burgerama. Prepare to witness the group blossom in the months to come.
I had the opportunity to chat with Hashill while he's still overseas.
Here's what he had to say:
Q: How did you first get into making your own music? When I bought my first guitar, I started covering different styles of music and after a while it couldn’t satisfy me anymore. Then I started to play and record some of my own riffs and melodies. I realized that I had a deep passion for making music since I'm able to apply my own feelings to it.
I used a simple drum machine and tried to gather different parts into one structure to record them on my computer which led me to the experiences of songwriting and production. That was just the beginning. To start working more professionally, I decided to band up with my old friend from school and this was how Psychic Bloom started!
Q: What was it like recording your music in Iran? Is there a scene there? A: That was extremely difficult and frustrating! We could burly find a good studio and renting rates are too high. The studio men look like they don’t have any idea to what exactly we need to do for the process and they were totally alien to our musical style. They just tried to keep us in the studio longer so they could take some more money.
So we decided to record the debut album in our homemade bedroom studio with a tape recorder where we had to handle all the stuff like recording, mixing and mastering. For the drums, we used one-mic-recording technique which was done in a remote and under construction building around the city.
That was all very time consuming and after all these difficulties, we weren't too satisfied with the result although we got so much positive feedback. There is not much of a scene in Iran. There are several independent artists working almost entirely in secrecy, in their private spaces.