Hype: Let Us Keep Laughing In The Dark

You know when you wake up at 3:00am, and you don't know which weighs the more; the dark of the night or the dark of your mind? And your only hope for peace is dawn? And then the feeling when that first crack of light appears through the blind, and suddenly you're calmness incarnate?

That's {Psychologist}: a London-based art graduate who just happens to be producing some of the finest Hour of The Wolf music around right now. Channelling Massive Attack and early Portishead through Burial, {Psychologist} - a.k.a. Iain Woods - sings of "heartbreak and loss, but always with a strand of hope..." in a voice so fragile you almost fear for his life.

When Particles Collide is one young man's lament about death and the philosophical idea of eternal return, and is just about one of the best things I've heard in a long while. Initially skeletal and bare, the sparse beat and melancholy keys eventually crack, giving way to a chorus so warm and soothing it drags you up by the lapels and let's you soar - it's the sound of something breaking, and of healing. All underpinned with a gloriously wobbly bass line... "The soundtrack to the soul leaving the body once and for all" is how Iain himself describes it - I guess soul music is perhaps the only fitting description; spilling over from one, soaked up by another.

I hear the live show is like a rave cabaret, with original tracks remixed with loads of 'old and weird vinyl'. Add to that a scratch DJ and two violinists, and you have a show I'd say you'd do well to get involved with...

You can peep {Psychologist} on the 14th of January at Brixton Windmill, and at Barden's Boudoir on the 11th of February, with more shows to be announced soon.

{Psychologist} - When Particles Collide (YSI)