New York-based psych artist and poet Christopher Porpora, aka Cheval Sombre, will release a new EP, Madder Love, of re-imaginings and remixes from his second record, Mad Love, on September 29 via Sonic Cathedral.
The collection is built on a fittingly romantic tale. An intimate gig at St Pancras Old Church in 2012 found Justin Robertson, members of The Horrors and Richard Norris, aka The Time And Space Machine, all in attendance. All under one roof, they conceived the idea of remixing tracks from Mad Love. However, when the hard drive containing all but one of the album’s original stems was discovered to be lost, the remixers (with Tom Furse going to bat for The Horrors) were left producing three distinct versions of the surviving song, ‘Couldn’t Do’, for Madder Love, finished by Cheval’s own reworking of Mad Love opener ‘Someplace Else’, aptly-titled ‘Someplace Slow’. Sonic Cathedral have given us a first play of Robertson’s rework, under his Deadstock 33s guise, melding Eastern-influenced tonality with a four-to-the-flour backbeat, luring you into surely the summer’s strangest, trippiest disco, which you can avail yourself of above.
Cheval also has a pair of UK dates on the horizon – the Total Refreshment Centre in London on September 25 and Liverpool International Festival Of Psychedelia, 27 – and a new full-length effort touted for 2015; head to Sonic Cathedral’s website to pre-order the EP, and take a look at an exclusive video he released last week for the Psych Fest below:
