Psychedelia – what’s not to love? Tie dye t-shirts and bandannas, sticking it to ‘the man’ with flower power, plus, lest we forget, a whole lot of mind-bending drugs. There’s a bit of a neo-psych revival afoot with Temples leading the way in the Midlands, so today we’re seeing if Manchester five piece Purple Heart Parade can pass the acid test…
What They Have To Say
Formed in late 2012, we are Purple Heart Parade – a 5-piece Psych-band from Manchester that offers both a completely mesmerising live performance not to be missed and a fuzz-fuelled recorded sound with songs that jump from a dreamlike state to out-and-out pant-shaking psych-rock.
We have a psych-rock-fuzz sound that’s ever-growing and one we are making our own as it just kinda’ falls naturally to each band member. We all put our own stamp on each song. The whole thing works together into songs that sound well-crafted and have certainly been catching the imagination of those who have seen and heard us.
We already have loads of exciting gigs lined up with bands like The Last Party and Exit Calm, and our aim is to push things as far as we can, but to do that our goals are simply based on writing the sort of music that comes naturally to us, and then hoping enough people out there like it or hate it enough to talk about it to other people for them to discover whether they like it or hate it. Either or is fine with us.
When people come watch us live we want to give that extra connection with the audience that you can’t with recorded songs – and I promise you will be mesmerised.
Pete (our singer) is completely spell-binding – you won’t take your eyes off him – and the soundtrack behind him is so full of energy and atmosphere you’ll leave our gigs nearly as knackered as us.
We try to give you the ‘Pink Floyd’ experience regarding the light show… except we’re all real people, so we sport a £5 strobe light and a selection of our x-mas fairy lights.
Why do we do this ? Well it’s what we do when we rehearse, and its created the ambience that helped us write those tunes, so our thinking is to bring the rehearsal room to the stage – it sounds daft – but it all adds astonishingly well to the fact you are watching something a bit different. A little bit endearing. A little bit mental.
Our first track ‘The Room’ is out now – and with 6 tracks already recorded at The Edge, near Alderley Edge, and being mixed by Stephen De Sarasola as we speak – you’ll be hearing a lot more from us very soon.
What We Have To Say
Pink Floyd with fairy lights eh? Where their light show might need a bit of work that’s not the case with the music. There’s no denying this track is a fully formed, well produced, hazy trip worth taking. Floating from the ether are trance-inducing vocals, soothing riffs which lull you into a false sense of security before building into a shredding finale, and a rumbling bassline to match. It’s a beautiful introduction to an impressive new band. We’re told their repertoire gets quite heavy in places and if the live show is as spellbinding as they describe then we’ll definitely be seeing them at a gig soon.
Words: Simon Butcher (@sbutcher1)
