Psychological Strategy Board is a collaboration between Paul Snowdon (Time Attendant) and Maybury that grew out of several years worth of unintentional improvisation on the Exotic Pylon radio show on Resonance FM. After being invited to participate in a sort-of remix project for the Front and Follow label we decided to give ourselves a name and formalise the concepts that we had subconsciously adopted over the years (largely based on strict parameters of improvisation, restriction and removal of authorial control) . Paul is a painter, sculptor and largely avoids instruments for the production of sound and Maybury is a writer, broadcaster and non-musician who works exclusively with looping samples. A chance encounter via Radio 3 led to our being invited to record the soundtrack to a documentary about the extraordinary work that artist Penny Slinger was producing in the late 60's. The wrinkle in this process was having no visual footage to refer to and receiving sonic guidance solely through gnomic emails from the Richard Kovitch, the film's director. A couple of years after completion of the soundtrack, the film saw the light of the day and we were released from hibernation as we worked out how the hell to reproduce the panic-ambient we had accidentally stumbled upon.
So we find ourselves in an unexpected new phase. The room in which the soundtrack was recorded was a key instrument in our original incarnation and this is no longer part of our lives. Last year we were experimenting with what the project meant as a live entity and this leads us to now, where we have a sound in our head that we're striving to reach whilst simultaneously embracing patience, restraint and the urge to pile on the noise. We think the panic is still there though.
