Chris Mitchell
UNKLE’s Psyence Fiction has been the UK’s most-eagerly awaited album of 1998. So eagerly awaited that virtually all of the UK music press published previews rather than reviews of the album, so keen were they to get in there and proclaim UNKLE the new saviours of British music. Which is particularly strange in these dreary Oasis-drenched days because Psyence Fiction doesn’t sound British – in fact it doesn’t even sound like the same band from track to track. Instead, the debut album from the collective minds of Mo’Wax Records founder James Lavelle and the acclaimed DJ Shadow is an international, eclectic riot of influences, fusing guitars, beats, rap and a host of collaborators into a welter of otherworldly noise.
Like its filmic namesake, Psyence Fiction is often ominous, schitzophrenic and out on the edge. With Radiohead’s Thom Yorke, The Verve’s Richard Ashcroft and the Beastie Boys’ Mike D all contributing paranoid, twisted lead vocals on various tracks, this album is what Major Tom would’ve recorded if he’d ever made it back to earth. Fans of the guitar-driven Radiohead and Verve won’t be disappointed with the epic vocal performances both Yorke and Ashcroft give over sonic wastelands of scratched-up strings and broken-down beats.
These tracks are interspersed between chilling, strangely beautiful instrumentals and eerie vocal samples from long forgotten films, all contributing to the effect of being lost in space. Some will be repelled by the way Psyence Fiction takes what you’re familiar with and rips its original setting to shreds. Others will love it for precisely the same reason.
If you’re looking for a lazy comparison, UNKLE’s debut sounds like the dark side of the Chemical Brothers’ Drill Your Own Hole. There is the same ethos that anything goes but without any of the Chemicals’ brash upbeat attitude. Instead, Psyence Fiction seems forever on the brink of implosion through its own destruction and reconstruction of other music. The beauty is that UNKLE never collapse into the black hole of their own making. Set the controls for the heart of the sun.
