In the late 1970s, Valium was the most widely prescribed drug in the Western world. It was seen as the miracle cure for all manner of ills and the firm behind it, Hoffmann-La Roche, were raking it in. They aggressively – and controversially – marketed Valium as the golden solution to everything from anxiety and fatigue to emotional strain and even marital issues – all of which they collectively termed ‘psychic tension’.
Dead Sea Apes guitarist Brett Savage came across the phrase during the early recordings for his band’s new album. Something struck a chord and it ended up becoming the album title.
“I was thinking about how the psyche’s under attack through all these constant horrors we’re faced with. We live in a very different place than we did 10 years ago. Everything’s really brought to the fore. It’s non-stop. Some aspects are a lot harder to digest than others, like genocide. You can’t really turn your eyes away from it anymore.”
The noise-rock trio – also featuring Chris Hardman on drums and Jack Toker (of Jack’s Guitars in Hebden Bridge) on bass – are not on overtly political band. For one, they’re primarily an instrumental outfit. Song titles aside, they are limited in their messaging. And yet they routinely create gargantuan soundscapes that seem to reflect the mood of our modern society – or offer an escape from it. Brett is reluctant to push an agenda, admitting his own views remain unformed, but says he feels the appeal of anarchy more now than ever before.
“It’s not that I don’t believe in a state, but more I don’t believe in the competency of politicians. I’m more concerned about the corruptibility of them. I’d actually sort of advocate for AI to do most of the decision-making these days because at least it’s not determined by the brown envelope. I’m just so jaded with political parties in England that I find it really hard to subscribe to any of them. I was a big Jeremy Corbyn fan when he was around but you can see the system pretty much broke him down. He might not be particularly competent but at least he was incorruptible. That was something.”
Psychic Tension, released on the Cardinal Fuzz label, is a direct descendant of 2023 predecessor, Rewilding. It grapples with the same kind of raw, visceral energy but pushes it to a new level of intensity. There are brutally thunderous riffs, searing guitar shreds and catatonic rhythmic pummellings. Hard psych grooves clash with the desert rock rumblings of bands like Kyuss. But there are also invigorating, near-euphoric chord shifts, moments of sparse, cavernous reflection and plenty of wide-eyed wondering.
The first couple of tracks came together quickly and Brett felt they’d soon have another album ready to go. But life circumstances dictated otherwise. It took another three years to finish it.
Dead Sea Apes have a well-honed approach, which comes in part from their veneration for psych pioneers Can. The band improvise and jam at their practice room in Oldham until sequences emerge that they like. The room is always rigged up for recording so they go back, pull out the sections that float their boat and piece the songs together over time. It’s a process they hit upon while making Lupus, the band’s first full-length album released on Deep Water Acres in 2012, which Brett deems “a big, early turning point” for the band.
“We can do a track as many times as we need to but we are very aware of not draining the life out of it. So we try and catch it as vitally as we can. I think with this album, we actually did a lot more overdubs than usual. But you’ve got to be careful you don’t over egg the pudding, that you don’t lose the essence of what you’re doing. The last two tracks had some of the more difficult bits. Ursa Minor was about three different jams squashed into one thing. It took a while to knock it into shape. Deathless, the last one, that was a riff that Jack brought in with him.”
Dead Sea Apes have explored a range of influences over the years. They’ve dabbled in dub, dark ambient and spoken word. Jack has a love of heavy industrial. Chris is a passionate Miles Davis fan. Brett tells me he’s recently been listening to a lot of Japanese psych stuff from the Nineties. But the centre of their Venn diagram is unmistakably the aforementioned Can. Quite incredibly, one of Dead Sea Apes first gigs was with Damo Suzuki, the legendary singer of the German krautrock experimentalists.
“It was about the third or fourth gig we did. Damo would have played with anyone. He loved the idea of just turning up and doing something in the moment. We were a really young band then. He was probably well into his sixties, but he was still quite an energetic bloke. He could get dead excitable. He struggled understanding my accent. I remember asking him ‘Are you happy?’ And he went ‘Yes, I’m yappy’ and he just started doing this little dance. He was a very gracious bloke.”
A defining characteristic of any new Dead Sea Apes album is its artwork and Psychic Tension is no different. Brett has designed numerous album sleeves, as well as the highly distinguished gig posters used by Dark Matter Promotions. It took numerous iterations before the Psychic Tension album cover was fully formed.
“I got this really weird book from a charity shop about 25 years ago called Star Maps with Hubble style pictures on the cover. But it gets really weird when you get inside. There was the picture of a guy in an isolation chamber and it just really struck me. So I thought I’d build something around that. I was thinking about what’s attacking our collective psyches – things like war and climate change. I’m not a particularly skilled artist. I just plough on until something comes up that I like.”
Brett is flush with ideas. As well as his output with Dead Sea Apes, he’s in the band Celestial Power with Dead Sea Apes drummer Chris and Cardinal Fuzz founder Dave Cambridge. Brett has been involved with a number of Cardinal Fuzz initiatives over the years. The next Dead Sea Apes release is in the pipeline too – a collaboration project that features Jake Blanchard, Sophie Cooper, Mark Cunningham (Mars, Blood Quartet) and Scott Thompson (Band Whose Name Is A Symbol).
But for now, we have plenty to savour in Psychic Tension. Order online from Cardinal Fuzz:
- BUY: Dead Sea Apes – ‘Psychic Tension’
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Dead Sea Apes play a special launch show for Psychic Tension at The Golden Lion, Todmorden, on Sunday 13th September, 2026. Support comes from Erosion Control. BUY TICKETS>
Image credits: Richie Yates, Lee Edwards
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