It’s taken a while, but the Psychonauts finally deliver.

Like their records, the careers of mid-90s trip-hoppers hardly throb with “get up and go”. Portishead seem permanently asleep while, after long sabbaticals, the last records from Massive Attack and Tricky rummaged around aimlessly for a point, like a stoner searching for the blim they dropped down the sofa.

Given that the holy Bristol Trinity were unable to keep it together there was no reason to suspect that we’d ever hear from the Psychonauts – who hail from just down t’ road in Yeovil – again. Especially since, before this year, their entire recorded output amounted to one single (2000’s Hot Blood), a few remixes and helming the Mo’Wax back catalogue compilation, Time Machine. None of which hinted that they were capable of producing an album as eclectic, expansive and emotional as their debut LP, Songs For Creatures.

“We completed it 18 months ago,” claims Paul Mogg, one half of the duo alongside childhood friend Pablo Clements. “And spent about two years before that, learning the equipment. We were in an unusual situation because we were signed to Mo’Wax without ever having recorded anything.”

Indeed, The Psychonauts made their reputation as DJs and this sealed a deal with James Lavelle’s Mo’Wax, who released Hot Blood. “As DJs we always aim for diversity and this can be heard on the album,” Paul reckons.

Songs For Creatures certainly isn’t an LP of somnambulant trip-hop beats. Nor, despite the Psychonauts’ professions to be production dilettantes, does it sound like two amateurs bumbling around the studio. Rather, it’s one of the most well-rounded records of the year, never eclectic for the sake of it but managing to encompass everything from David Holmes-style cinematica on Circles, thrusting electro-funk on Empty Love and even folk-rocking with James Yorkston on Hips For Scotland.

Times have changed and the Psychonauts have not only moved with them but arguably pre-empted the shift. Now signed to DJ Hell’s über-cool International DeeJay Gigolos instead of Mo’Wax, the disco-punk of Hot Blood now sounds much more in tune with the prevailing climate than it did three years ago.

“When we released Hot Blood everyone was expecting some doggy hip-hop track because we were on Mo’Wax,” Paul remembers. “And we came out with a heavily 80s-influenced disco punk track, which no one was doing then but which everyone is at now. We’ve never deliberately set out to challenge preconceptions, but if we do then great.” Paul Clarke 24 October 03

Psychonauts – Songs For Creatures, released 27 October 03 on International DeeJay Gigolos.

useful link: www.gigolo-records.de