PSYCHOSOMATIK is an independent psychedelic rock duo based out of Miami, FL.

PSYCHOSOMATIK debuts on YouTube Music, Spotify, Apple Music, and a host of other streaming services on MARCH 13, 2023.
You can also find us at:
Bandcamp: psychosomatik2.bandcamp.com
Email: psychosomatik21@gmail.com
Insta: @_psychosomatik_
Soundcloud: on.soundcloud.com/SNgNM
Bandmix: bandmix.com/snodog

We present, after 6 long months of work, the full-length self-titled LP PSYCHOSOMATIK. As of March 13, 2023, this album is also available in physical CD format, which comes with an exclusive 3 bonus tracks and a 16-page booklet with art, photos, lyrics, and a 3000-word essay detailing the story behind the music.

Tracklist:
1. Roots
2. Rust
3. Paper Crane
4. Headspace
5. From the Beginning
6. Best Friend
7. Hadal Zone
8. Labor Day
9. Psychosomatic
10. Coyote
11. Breeze

For the best experience, listen in headphones to the physical CD edition or a similar high quality audio source.


PSYCHOSOMATIK germinated in September 2021. It was based on a simple idea: making music as directly as possible. We would have made a live album if we had had a full band. We would have hired a drummer and a singer if we had the money. Instead, what the world got was a DIY rock album made without a DAW, without a recording budget, without a paddle—the old fashioned way.
I got lost on the way across town to meet Edison Mayorga, my future collaborator, and a bottle of rubbing alcohol spilled in the trunk. The fumes were suffocating. I showed up on the doorstep of his cramped apartment in Little Havana out of breath, nauseous, and lightheaded. Things hadn’t been going too well for me since I had moved to Miami three months prior, but I had begun to notice that I felt more capable riding that line—I felt more energized when I was just barely breaking even.
Edison was a Miami native. He was quiet and composed. You might mistake him for one of the Greek busts in Vizcaya Gardens if you catch him lost in thought. But inside, he was an impatient rebel. “I want to start a band, man,” he said. “I feel like my life is passing me by.” He wore dark full length clothes and loved music of all stripes, from classical to underground metal to psychedelic rock to folk music. He had subversive taste in music, film, and art and a self-proclaimed misanthrope. He loved the profane, the obscure, or the undervalued. In short, we were natural conspirators.
He was a collector. I collected CDs, but he collected vinyls, posters, DVDs, and CDs. He had LPs and singles. He had the wrapping paper. He saved every box. He had even saved the boxes for his guitar pedals, which he lovingly repackaged and sealed each time he tore down his guitar rig.
More importantly, we both listened to music like it was 1973. When we wanted more music, we saved up some money and went down to the record store, Museo del Disco. We listened to whole albums in one sitting, usually in headphones for close listening and detail. We listened to bonus tracks. We had rare pressings and remasters and multiple copies of our favorites. Most of our generation had their music scoped, compressed, and piped down a tube like a recombinated spitball formed by accretion as it was passed around a bored PE class right before lunch. We had inserts, liner notes, album art, collages, photos, and handwritten lyrics to feast our eyes. We could see and touch and hear the music for ourselves, unadulterated, uncurated. In ’73, there was no internet algorithm to tell you which albums or songs were good. Having no other choice makes one come to appreciate the underground or the avante-garde.
And with that, Edison dragged out and dusted off all his vinyl crates. He pulled out one that I had collected myself on CD—ELP’s Brain Salad Surgery—and set the needle on side one. I felt transported while we sat back and listened. I could hear our differences of tastes in the slight distortion, clicks, and pops that punctuated the album I had known so well on my precise but somewhat clinical CD version.
Seventeen months later, we sat down together on the couch in my cramped little apartment and I played a disc from our first limited run of PSYCHOSOMATIK CDs. We proudly inserted the freshly printed 16-page booklets into 25 jewel cases while the album played. We closed the cases one by one with a solemn finality. The following Monday, we shipped out our first sold copy to my longtime friend in Colorado.
It didn’t matter that we had no budget for recording, release, or physical distribution. Edison flat-out stated that he wanted us to be an underground band. My brother heard our early mixes and insisted we were doing it the hard way. He said we were struggling, in fact, for no reason. But we wanted that. We wanted the limitations to impose on us, to spark our creativity. No grid. No tuning. We didn’t let anything stop us, even the lack of collaborators. Armed with only a 12-track Zoom mixing board and some microphones, we believed we could make a great album without a DAW, without an advertising budget, without any help—doing all the mixing, recording, designing, production, and assembly ourselves.
We were influenced mostly by rock bands, but we wanted to build our songs in a pop format with psychedelic influences, a touch of reggae, and a smidge of jazz. We wanted to write songs that reflected our love of Pink Floyd, Alice in Chains, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, Rush, Hendrix, and Stone Temple Pilots, but we also didn’t want to hide more eclectic influences like The Police, Porcupine Tree, Green Day, Jaco Pastorius, Heart, the Buddy Miles Express, Bob Marley, Steely Dan, and even folk artists like Neil Young, David Bowie, and Harry Nilsson.
We wanted each song to be an experiment unto itself. We had psychedelic instrumentals, simple pop songs, dense progressive songs, acoustic and electric songs, a reggae-infused song, and even a cover song. We used all the textures we had available, including 12-string guitars, fretless bass, a cocktail-sized drumkit, a cowbell, a shaker, and a harmonica. For “Coyote,” we broke a whiskey glass with a spoon on our first and only drum take. The album had to be an experience, a cohesive whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. From beginning to end, it needed to take you through a series of emotions and atmospheres that culminated and crystallized into a greater meditation, a wordless euphony that left a pleasant, resonant residue in the soul.
This effort was for music collectors, music fans, and music lovers. You are the beginning and the end of music. Here’s our little addition to the great spitball of music available on streaming services everywhere. (If you really want to experience this record, get the CD and kick back in a chair with some headphones).