Pshycotic Beats recently released ‘It’s About Time’, a more uplifting direction than some of his more atmospheric material. The track is taken from his exciting upcoming album ‘Festering’, out October 28th, 2022.

Largely influenced by the euphoric aesthetics of acts like Robyn and Depeche Mode, his latest release highlights more of his adventurous side, brimming with rich and powerful textures. Pshycotic Beats’ Andrés Costureras is an enigma, a shapeshifter whose work is impossible to pigeonhole, with his artist name itself (pronounced ‘shy-cotic beats’) encompassing his unique persona and artistry. His albums are more than a record. It’s a journey for the mind.

The full length album ‘Festering’ will be available digitally on October 28th, 2022.

“It’s a musical journey from my childhood to the present day”

How much work was invested in the creation of your upcoming album, ‘Festering’?

Andrés Costureras: Almost 5 years. Normally I’ve done almost all of my albums in a concentrated period of 6 months. But this album came about in the midst of a major depression, which has kept me bedridden for years. So I started composing and making the first demos in 2018, and had to stop for a year. Then after I got the sync deal for the Killing Eve series I set up a new recording studio and invested in a bunch of new plugins and reworked a bit of all the demos I had done, getting more sophisticated and improving the production. Finally in 2021 I locked myself away for 14 months to record and finish the album. It has been a Herculean task.

Would it be possible to draw parallels to your latest release, ‘Hammering Noises’, and if so what will be the main difference music-vise?

The album is autobiographical. It’s a musical journey from my childhood to the present day. I was born in 1980, so the album has a very tech-disco, eighties and hedonistic first part, and then we gradually move to a sad, introspective and melancholic second part. But all loaded with a strong message of self-improvement. A message that we are going to get ahead. After what we have lived in recent years I think we deserve it.

“The music has come directly from within me”

To what degree are you influenced by other artists? Do you think that life events, being good or bad, have a bigger impact on who you became as a musician?

I am less and less influenced by other artists. On this album I’ve been conscious that the music has come directly from within me. On previous albums I have tried to make a song like Phil Spector, or try to emulate Giorgio Moroder or DFA Records artists. When you are starting out you don’t really know who you are as an artist and you tend to copy people until you find your own voice. I also have a rampant case of imposter syndrome. I don’t consider myself a musician yet.

Would you like to share some further words about the recording and producing process for your upcoming album?

On all my previous albums I have done all the string arrangements by computer. String arrangements are the most important thing in my music and for ‘Festering’ I made it my goal to get rid of the midi string and record with real strings. I can’t afford to record a full orchestra because it’s very expensive, you have to hire a conductor, et cetera. So I recorded tracks and layered tracks of instruments in my own studio, recording each instrument separately. It’s been a lot of work but the result is something else. It was worth it. I’ve also worked a lot on my voice, I’ve worked with a vocal coach and I’ve been teaching for almost a year and it’s been very noticeable.

Would you like to tell us about a trilogy of albums that you recorded between 2013 and 2020; ‘Rexer Flash’, ‘Dormihcum’ and ‘The Black Sea’? Please share some deeper insights about them.

It was a trilogy dedicated to mental health. My first album ‘Rexer Flash’ is no big deal, you can skip it, but ‘Dormihcum’ and ‘The Black Sea’ are unique albums. They are like the soundtrack of a movie that hasn’t been shot yet, like a musical. They have a plot, a thread, a knot and a finale. In them I propose a journey to other worlds. ‘Dormihcum’ is a journey to a mental institution hidden in the ruins of a cemetery, and ‘The Black Sea’ is the story of how humanity is self-liquidating by throwing itself into a black sea, committing suicide because of the shame of how we are, that we are a virus for the planet. And that was fiction, I would never have thought that reality would surpass fiction in such a dramatic way as it has done.

Would you say that there is a certain concept behind ‘Festering’ too?

Yes, of course. The little boy on the cover is me at the age of two. That was around the age when I started to get the first hints that I might have a psychiatric disorder. The album is called ‘Festering’ because that’s the analogy they use in the psychoanalytic process I’m going through to explain where my mental health issues come from, and they come from things that weren’t worked on with therapy at the time when I was little, and those wounds have been festering for years until at 38 I had the biggest crisis of my life, before the pandemic. The album is a journey into the light.

What are some future plans for you?

To rest. I’m a workaholic, I’ve been making music for 12 years without stopping and I’m “forced” to take a sabbatical by my doctors. I haven’t taken a day off in 12 years because I’m obsessive compulsive and can’t stop like a normal person. The idea of stopping for a year terrifies me, I’m sure another record will come out of the process.

Klemen Breznikar

Pshycotic Beats Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / Bandcamp / Bigcartel / YouTube