The Psychotic Monks

With new album Pink Colour Surgery out 3rd February 2023 (produced by Gilla Band’s Daniel Fox) via Fatcat Records / Vicious Circle (pre-order here), France’s The Psychotic Monks share experimental new single ‘Crash’ with a video directed by Bart Price (Black Country, New Road). 

They also announce their only UK date at London’s Pickle Factory on 4th March with tickets on sale now here. 

Speaking on the new track, Paul Dussaux says "Crash was made out of jam sessions, as we were trying to get out of our comfort-zone and explore more electronic rhythms and sounds. The lyrics are about people on tour, feeling exhausted about live, festivals, and about the mental health within the music industry. We got a lot of testimonies plus our personal experience that motivates us to try to talk about it. Not without some heavy emotions, this track means to create a safe moment of dance for all."

Paul adds, “During the mixing process, Daniel (Fox) put the different elements of the song in places we had never though of, which made us rediscover the song as a more techno-like track that we really enjoyed, not without a doubt because it was really far from everything we had ever done.”

Director Bart Price says of the video, "The music video for ‘Crash’ combines HD stock clips, iPhone shots of the singer and sped-up and reversed footage that I filmed in Times Square in NYC. It's a dark late-capitalist fever dream in which everyone is constantly moving backwards, at the same time as making you feel like you're stuck in fast-forward like being trapped inside a broken old VHS player. There's also a lot of videos of people running. Joggers seem to have such purpose in their lives and believe in the possibility of self-improvement. I like the idea of that - in many ways this music video is a celebration of physical exercise. Just do it."

Yet radical, Pink Colour Surgery’s work is truly accessible to those who immerse themselves in it in depth. One is unceasingly hypnotised, shaken, because its soul flirts dangerously with a furious and oppressive trance. How then the journey becomes addictive, letting yourself slide from one track to another, sometimes struck, sometimes set ablaze with an unexpected epiphany, because its light irradiates us. Live their music is an intimate, sensory experience, whose deflagration is still received long after. 

Pink Colour Surgery is produced by Daniel Fox of Gilla Band - composed in part by improvisations, it arrives as an act of resistance to the ambient violence. Disconcerting at first sight, this new opus operates in the dark a surgery of ethics which is fleshed out of pink for a staggering metamorphosis. Its very structure embarks us entirely on an initiatory trip full of secret corners, provided that we accept to dive into it, to plunge into it.

Already releasing two fiery albums, Silence Slowly And Madly Shines in 2017 (Alter K) and Private Meaning First in 2019 (Vicious Circle / Fatcat Records), The Psychotic Monks have never ceased to impress us with their maturity and determination to offer a singular stage and discographic presence.