Cargo Records

Early Violence

"Psychic Ills have that dance band-by-accident thing going for them in a big way. Everything about them is bewitching, really, evacuating...an unlikely future-primitive grind, something as if (say) rave music and shoegaze were exactly the same thing." Village Voice

"This NYC quartet set their stall somewhere between oceanic guitar abstraction and the brittle crunch of psychedelic garage rock, feeding their extended chugging jams through a thick fog of fuzz." The WireThis CD is a compilation of Psychic Ills' first two releases, Mental Violence I and Mental Violence II. Both were only issued on vinyl in very scant numbers and disappeared in the blink of an eye, that is until now. Mental Violence I was issued in 2003 in an edition of 600 copies as a black and white hand number 7". It captures the band in it's prototype stage. At this point they were a two-piece with Tom Gluibizzi & Tres Warren playing everything and relying on synths and overdubbing to achieve the polyphonic madness that the band has become known for. Byron Coley called it a "young sound" and he hit the mark; the two tracks teem with energy and feel as if they could skip out of orbit at any moment. Around the time of Mental Violence I Elizabeth Hart and Brian Tamborello joined Tres and Tom, bringing the current line up into focus. The Mental Violence II sessions at our own Junkyard Audio Salvage found the band defining themselves. These were intense days, the band's live shows were explosive as they navigated their changing ideas and band dynamics. Also featured on this CD are two tracks from around the time of these two early releases. The first, Highway of Death, is previously unreleased, while the second, Red-Split, has until now only been available as a track with the magazine Galactic Zoo Dossier.This material encapsulates the formative days of the band, who have since released their acclaimed full-length Dins. Already hard at work on their next album, Psychic Ills show no sign of slowing down, and this compilation gives people the chance to hear where things began. PSYCHIC ILLS early violence.