“I was like ‘I’m gonna start a band of non-musicians, I’m talking 15 people, and we’re just gonna get up there and jam’. To which my friend Sara replied ‘Yeah, like Psychedelic Horseshit.'  The rest is history.”

Singer/guitarist Matt Whitehurst is telling me about how the early Fall/Dinosaur Jnr meets swamp racket of the Columbus, Ohio band’s debut album Magic Flowers Droned came to be.  “We got real high and sometimes drunk and a little bit of acid for perspective. We recorded the whole thing in like four to five days over the course of four months and then spent like forever mixing the thing. I guess it doesn’t show, it’s like way unlistenable you know. We should’ve gotten some jackass like Phil Collins to mix it, then people would really love us.”

Like fellow blues extremists Times New Viking, Psychedelic Horseshit are being labeled as something called Shitgaze. Yet despite a close respect the two bands (both signed to Siltbreeze) have for each other, Matt is keen to illuminate the difference: “It takes a seasoned pair of ears to get past the distortions I know, but once you do it’s easy to see that TNV and Horseshit are galaxies apart musically. They write really concise pop songs, we write really messy drug songs.  They’re really into all that DIY stuff, we lean more towards My Bloody Valentine and hip-hop. We’re shooting for something different.”

Recent single New Age Hippies does feel kind of concise. It’s over in a couple of minutes, Matt’s vocal snarls over cheap Casio beats and that gnarly, scrappy and multi textured distortion so beloved of the band. Thematically the song feels poised and aimed: “Lots of people think I was being really specific and they wanna know who it’s about, like I’d actually written the song about someone. That song is about all of us as far as I’m concerned, we’ve all got a little new wave hippie in us and it’s sad but its also kinda the times and its where we go onward from”
 
Yeah, but would Psychedelic Horseshit do a Levi’s ad? “For sure, I’m really into using the media in weird subversive ways.  Plus that shit is totally surreal. I would love all the little drones in the world buying jeans while listening to Psychedelic Horseshit.  And we’d get paid, and that mean more drugs and studio time. Then we’d score more babes, it would be like heaven. As if…”

The band aren’t afraid to face accusations of sounding amateurish: “I guess I’d have to agree with them. I mean, we recorded in a shitty basement on thirty-year-old gear while we were all fucked up.  Doesn’t sound very professional to me. We can’t play the same way twice ever. We define amateur. So what, professional is safe and boring. I want to keep learning as we go on and progress. If you already know every scale and every timing you’ve got nowhere to go.  One day we will be professional, and then everyone will be like ‘You suck, you were better when you sucked’. That will be an awesome day.”