Twenty years ago, the idea that Sym Gharial, bass player with Brighton psychobilly renegades The Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster, would end up making well-produced electronic pop would have been anathema to many of the group’s diehard fans. And yet Psychic Cinema, Primitive Ignorant’s second album, shares some of his former band’s DNA if you go looking for it. ‘Salty Nights’, in particular, contains a squelchy bass motif that rocks back and forth on what ordinarily would have been hammered off the lowest string of a bass guitar, a rock and roll riff reinvigorated with a big beat driven synthscape, including a change going into the bridge that is unmistakably the handiwork of a former member of TEMBLD.
Moreover, the fact that this, at least presentationally, is very different to what he was doing in the early 2000s is to be celebrated. Gharial spoke at length to The Quietus in 2020 about the struggle of fitting in as an Indian Sikh growing up in 90s Britain. A haircut suddenly led to new opportunities that would have been beyond his dreams at the time, including being spotted and shot for an alternative cover for Pulp’s Different Class, meaning this shy second generation immigrant became, in a small way, part of the short-lived Britpop movement.
Those two ways of life seemed incompatible to him then, though Psychic Cinema feels very inclusive with a relaxed, whatever-goes attitude. The immigrant experience of attempting to assimilate is also in the electronic bars of contemporary pop songs here like ‘In The Forest’, though there’s also a playfulness with cultural references and ideas – the Arabian scales on ‘Power’, a song for Iggy Pop; the merging of hip hop and Depeche Mode on ‘A Day With You’, or the exotic dulcimer sounds of the EBM-like ‘Trash’ – that suggest an ease in what he’s doing. Never has Gharial sounded more in control, developing his own cyberpunk-adjacent synthwave
aesthetic.
The musician and producer, who recently relocated to Manchester, has finally unleashed his voice on this latest record, and it’s almost a shame he’s kept those warm, expressive vocals to himself for so long. The shedding of inhibition brings a much-needed touch of humanity to a record that is clinical, and sometimes machine-like, in its production style, a fine juxtaposition that might have been too cold without the vulnerability of his timber. Best of all is ‘High Rise Vampires’, a dynamic and cinematic number that begins with a mumbled, dolorous croon, which suddenly becomes isolated as he hits the sweet spot with a high note. From there, the track takes off, propelled by an insistent breakbeat, and it’s easy to imagine vampires moving around a city after sundown up on a big screen somewhere. Which is probably why he called the record Psychic Cinema.
