Psapp - Toy-pop Without Borders

Amid the relentless churn of trends, influences and seasons, there are, hidden in the folds of a schizophrenic music market, bands that step outside such logic. Bands whose music, hard to pigeonhole, carries at its core a rebellious, revolutionary spirit. Sticking to the period in which the band we're about to discuss made its debut - the decade straddling the Nineties and the 2000s - one is reminded of the Icelandic múm, another collective wrongly lumped in with the indietronica and glitch scene when they were in fact an entity entirely of their own, at times capable of producing exceptional music. The brief but intense story we're about to uncover is that of two people whose paths are not at all dissimilar.

Galia Durant and Carim Classman grew up in artistically different yet equally stimulating environments. Galia spent much of her life surrounded by records, books and art: her mother, in fact, is an avid vinyl collector, while her father holds a professorship in art history and is deeply knowledgeable about Indian music. Galia soaked up this artistic diversity, falling in love at the same time with Woody Guthrie's peace anthems and with acid-jazz. At age 8 she began studying piano and violin - though she preferred her old 1988 Casio SK-8, which Psapp still use to this day - and a few years later she formed her first band, GO, with her brother. Carim Classman trained musically in Germany, working with various mixing and recording studios, including one in Cologne, where he got the chance to meet bands like Einstürzende Neubauten and Die Toten Hosen. He also had the privilege of working at the famous Inner Space Studio, channelling his creativity into composing music on his own. In the late Nineties he moved to London, juggling odd jobs to make ends meet with his tireless passion for music, eventually settling into a studio in King's Cross, which is still used today as Psapp's home base.

The meeting between Galia and Carim would happen shortly after, and it would be a genuine case of artistic love at first sight, thanks to the unique chemistry and bond that would tie them together from the very start, as the closing line of their biography attests: "Psapp are, and always will be Carim Clasmann and Galia Durant".

Their very first appearance on record came with the inclusion of the track "Scissory" on the 2003 compilation "Indoor Shed", the result of a year of experiments and attempts. During this period the band - whose name was decided on at this point - began sending demos to various record labels, trying to catch attention with a style already strongly marked by an incredible array of sounds and noises coming mostly from toys, rubber figures, children's instruments (including a xylophone) and, more generally, any object capable of making a noise (including tin cans and mechanical ashtrays).

Despite the naivety of some of the experiments, it's essential to listen to these early releases to understand the genesis of such a peculiar sound. Given how precious these tracks are, in 2005 Domino wisely decided to release a compilation gathering all the songs left off the albums: the double CD Early Cats And Tracks contains sung and instrumental versions of all the songs left by the wayside during the 2003-2005 period.

The run-up to their debut album was preceded by a dense string of minor but important releases that helped pin down a sound that would soon be fully defined. Their debut EP, titled Do Something Wrong, released on the Melodic label, dates back to early 2003, followed in the autumn of that same year by the single "Difficult Key". During this period the duo struck up a friendship with Robin Saville - already a member of ISAN - who in the winter of 2004 released the EP Buttons And War on his own label, Arable.

Meanwhile, in March 2004 the EP Northdown came out for the Japanese market (worth noting are the lovely "Happy Lamb" and "Ice Weasel"), swiftly followed by Rear Moth, a 4-track vinyl release for the Waiwya label. Some of these tracks would end up on Tiger, My Friend, released in February 2005, again on Arable. This album and its sounds prompted the introduction of a new concept that celebrates a more "handmade" use of contemporary instrumentation - we might call it Digital Acoustic Music. Many bands, in drawing on electronics, alter its structure, to the point where terms like folktronica are now in common use, but for Psapp, explorers of music in every direction, the term "D.A.M." is more fitting.

The expressive maturity that Galia Durant and Carim Clasmann display after only a few years of experience is striking, showing inspiration that is always fresh and original. Packed with ideas, like a loose cannon cousin of Pram, their sound marries electronics and toy instruments, exploring the full range of auteur pop with brilliant, delightful flashes of inspiration.

The opening trio of songs celebrates a blend of beat, pop, folk and jazzy hints, dressed up in postmodern solutions involving loops, toy instruments, classical-leaning strings, over which rises a sensuous vocal full of nuance. In "Rear Moth" fractured electronics create an incredible dreamy effect that releases itself in a finale entrusted to the violin, while the vibrations of "Leaving In Coffins" open up space for the hypnotic "Calm Down", one of the album's high points.

The two most creative moments are surely the samba reinterpretation in "About Fun" and the brilliant reconstruction of jungle rhythms and sounds in "King Kong", while other experimental tracks accompany the strange "Charter". Set like a pearl between the last two songs mentioned is "The Counter", a delicate piece for piano and glockenspiel that adds further depth to a surprising record. Lastly, not to be forgotten is the poignant "Curuncula", a pop march woven between shard-like guitar notes and a sweet, tender vocal.

Psapp were already proving themselves a band capable of writing a new chapter in recent pop music, and Tiger, My Friend stands as a wonderfully timely album, one that demonstrates the true scope of their artistry. The fruits of that potential would soon reach the right ears. In those months Psapp's songs came to the attention of American record executives, who were immediately drawn to their sound and decided to use it in some TV series: this is how "Cosy In The Rocket" - a song that would later appear on the single Trycicle - was chosen as the theme tune for the TV show "Grey's Anatomy", whose first episode aired on Abc in March 2005.

New doors began opening for the band, along with a series of opportunities that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier.

At the end of 2005 their first tour of live shows began, across England and the rest of Europe. Given the complexity of their musical formula, they decided to bring in extra help to put together their live performances, enlisting Gwen Cheeseman (violin), Eshan Khadaroo (percussion), Jim Whelan (bass and keyboards) and, lastly, Matt Jones on audio effects. The success of this run of shows was immediate, and the Domino label, famously attentive to emerging talent, signed the duo before the year was out.

Carim and Galia arrived at 2006 well aware of their compositional skills, able both to fully exploit an innate versatility and to break free from any single musical context. On The Only Thing I Ever Wanted their music is essential and precious, a song-form that lives its moments of glory somewhere between a fractured rhythm and a cheeky, carefree voice. The electronics that often surround the compositional structure of the tracks are just one more element, not an overbearing presence. Their formula is made up of various elements that blend together naturally from one track to the next, shaping refined songs and chiselling sketches of rare grace. The influences underpinning this music are rooted in singer-songwriter pop, but at the same time there's a strong sense of a drive to create dysfunctions within the classic song structure. Hence we hear glitch rhythms, the most disparate acoustic instruments, and fanciful, unlikely samples.

The opening tracks "King Of You" and "Hi" give a good sense of all this: while in one the purely glitch score connects naturally with the rest of the song, adding elements and enriching its structure, the other is built on a swaying, playful groove, where Galia's voice proves mature and shadowy, dark and captivating. "This Way" conceptually brushes up against hints of deconstructed trip-hop, while "Needle & Thread" is yet another enchanted little fable, hushed and essential. The album's middle stretch continues with "New Rubbers", built around a few lines of amateurish toy piano, barely framed by an idle beat and the sweet sound of strings. A certain uptempo tendency livens up the mood with "Trycicle" and especially "The Words", where the ambling rhythm only dissolves in its final seconds.

Singer-songwriter refinement shows itself in "Hill Of Our Home", which pairs a slim, lolling synthetic beat with the crystalline sound of piano, backed by spot-on double bass and delicate jazzy percussion; this is the track where Psapp's leaning towards enveloping, classically-flavoured ballads comes through most clearly, though transformed and reworked into a modern context - not all that far removed from the sickly, oblique folk of bands like Tunng or Grizzly Bear, even if here softened by Durant's voice and, ultimately, far more restrained.

Confirming the constant shifting of moods and sensations are the two minutes of voice and piano alone that make up "Make Up", exactly what you wouldn't expect from an album like this: a hushed, minimal ballad, in which the muffled restraint of Durant's bittersweet voice caresses the darkness, revealing an intensity strong enough to place her among the best "women at the piano" in music today (the mind inevitably, if surprisingly, leaps all the way to Lisa Germano).

But, as with the bucolic dream of “Hill Of Hour Home,” the awakening comes swiftly again, with “Eating Spiders,” another swaying, rhythmic pop song that gradually fades away to make room for the dim tones of the lopsided closing lullaby “Upstairs,” built entirely on the soft electronic trinkets that have characterized the whole record, here decidedly tilted towards calm and nostalgia. A sort of enchanted melancholy seeps out of these essential, simple notes, a sad and gentle song, shy and thoughtful. A breath of reassuring sorrow.

Overall, a light, pleasant album brimming with exquisite pop taste, which dissolves its sonic musings into electronic amusements that are never pedantic nor an end in themselves, but instead set within a charming, refined frame that closely develops the advanced ideas of the aforementioned Pram.

After a two-year creative hiatus, the duo returns in 2008 with a collection of songs that is a natural evolution of the previous one, developing once again unprecedented stylistic paths. The regenerative capacity they had already shown in the past gives their music an unusual potential for growth. Having drastically scaled back the use of the toy-orchestra that had once made them famous, the band introduces a faint Mediterranean flavor on The Camel's Back, which contributes to the success of the operation, amid tropicalist scents, flawless arrangements, voice and instruments doled out by the gram, and a subtle decorative electronic touch. A fanfare painted in pastel colors that touches up its makeup but doesn't change its tune.

Scattered song fragments scatter into a thousand streamlets, the music guiding us through melodies pared down to the bone, enriched with imagination and taste, varying their compositional structure across the twelve tracks. Sparkling interplays between sampling and skittish guitars appear (“I Want That,” “The Monster Song”), sending out a clear, limpid message of innovation. Songs from another era fade lightly and shadowed (the fizzy “Part Like Waves” and the gentle pulpits of the title track), while the polychromies rain down abundantly, adding unmatched pieces to the puzzle (the tasty “Fickle Ghost” and the oddities of “Somewhere There Is A Record Of Our Actions”).

Through two instrumentals on the border between pop experimentation and dancing shades (“Marshat” sounds like a little march, “Homicide” is lopsided and disorienting), we plunge with lush delight into the depths of a show that, up to this point, has only reached its introduction. Ramshackle Balkan-brass-band choruses are dressed up with barely perceptible electronic lines (“Fix It”), “Mister Ant” blossoms amid double rhythms and lethal refrains, emotions pour out unstoppably with a languid, furrowed-brow piano (“Screws”).

Announcing a surprise ending, the band's final gift comes in the shape of the perfect “Parker,” a true masterpiece of pop art applied to rhythm, just brazen enough, capable of composing an ideal soundtrack for a country fair dominated by reckless dancing, gleaming trumpets, dim lights and a waning moon.

After six very intense years of releases and touring, the band decides to enter a period of temporary hibernation. That unconventional, outgoing and fairy-tale vision of pop only returns after five long years. As they recount in our interview, the two never rushed things, pacing their releases and the amount of music produced also according to personal needs (in those years Galia in fact became a mother). Still, five years is a very long time for a contemporary band. What could have happened to the magical toy-pop of Psapp?

What Makes Us Glow has the difficult task of acting as a bridge to the past after a long absence from the scene, of sounding current without distorting a winning formula, and ideally of not being repetitive. The good news is that it succeeds admirably; the bad news is that it's over far too soon. Galia's voice, the delightful shadings, the restless rhythms, the oddities of the toy-orchestra: everything has stayed as it was without coming across as formulaic or reckless. Extraordinary consistency, a sense of proportion and boundless technical skill are just some of the qualities that allow this collective to preserve an identity that, we can say with certainty, remains firmly intact.

Finding distinctive traits in such a finely sparkling little carousel is as masochistic an exercise as trying to tell apart the colors of a summer rainbow. The strength of Psapp doesn't lie in a guitar solo or a standout synth line, nor in vocal high notes. The real winning card is found in an overall, multifaceted sound, where many elements, each in equal measure, build piece by piece an effective and indistinguishable whole. So, this isn't music of standout singles or emerging personalities, but the product of a band, a group, a multiplicity.

When the music box of “Wet Salt” sets off amid xylophones, guitars, toy instruments and percussion, a journey begins through mystical chants (“The Cruel, The Kind, And The Bad,” the grandiloquent elegance of “That's The Spirit”), the psychedelic joyfulness of the trippiest episodes (the various “Seven,” “In The Black,” “Your Hot Knife”) and the usual world-pop leanings (Arabic-tinged sounds and scents in “Everything Belongs To The Sun” and “In And Out”). Where slowness takes over, more reflective sides emerge (the delightful cadenced rhythms of “Bone Marrow,” a call-and-response between violin and trumpet on “The Well And The Wall”), temporarily slowing an otherwise frantic and irresistible pace. As the manifesto of the record we can take the title track, an exhaustive summary of twelve tracks perpetually balanced between the fantastic and the fanciful, never cloying, always ready to keep their feet on the ground without overstepping the bounds of good taste.

Tourists (2019) comes out six years after its predecessor and confirms the rule whereby — as explained in our interview — Psapp tend to let inspiration settle, without any anxiety about releasing music frequently.

What immediately strikes the ear listening to the first tracks is the minimalist approach: most of the rhythms are measured and the piano is the cornerstone instrument of much of the album, shifting the focus towards a sound quite different from the fizzy verve that typically characterizes the Psapp style. Both “uPVC” and “Glove” are crepuscular ballads with an autumnal flavor, suspended between background murmurs, a lightly brushed snare drum or solitary piano notes. Along the same lines sits the beautiful “Vision,” which paints delicate instrumental interplay between strings, piano and hints of electronic textures.

To return to livelier tones one has to listen to the opening pair “Progress” and “Tourist,” where a revitalizing spark can be found that nevertheless blends perfectly with the album's relaxed tone. Adding to the variety of the tracklist are charming instrumentals under a minute long: in these brief scraps of music, Psapp give free rein to all their imagination in sonic composition, skillfully mixing electronics and field recordings (“Woods,” “Slippery” and “BIG”).

Moving on through the album, one cannot remain indifferent to “Pieces,” perhaps the most representative track of the whole collection. The almost tribal pulse of the percussion is streaked with various samples and instrumental phrasing in which Galia's voice fits magnificently into a hypnotic back-and-forth; it's also worth noting, on closer listening, just how many layers this song is built from. Managing to mask such complexity in the service of a pop song is an achievement only the very best can pull off.

Towards the end, the record settles into slightly more standard territory (the digital whispers of “Land,” the percussive acrobatics of “Work”), with “Orekche” as yet another toy-pop manifesto. In fact, the album ends as it began: on “A Fit,” Galia Durant sings a sweet piano song disturbed only by a faint digital ripple in the background, an essential piece of simple, pure beauty.

Psapp confirm once again the purely creative nature of their musical project, untethered from any production or contractual demands, entirely focused on ideas and the urgency of expressing themselves through music.

Tourists is an album that fits into an artistic journey whose end is, fortunately for us, still a long way off: the English duo's fervor is a fire that never dies down, one that will animate our lives for a long time to come.

Contributions by Gianfranco Marmoro (“Tiger, My Friend”) and Raffaello Russo (“The Only Thing I Ever Wanted”)

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