The Black Dog

I’ve not thought about Psychick Youth for a long time, the anti cult cult, but the reality is I had a great time and met a lot of good people, many of whom I’m still in touch with today. Left in the hands of others who just weren’t there, people jumped on the gravy train and ultimately failed to answer any questions. Failed books and failed documentaries followed, where the main priority seemed to be taking the money and hoping for the best, kinda sad really.

The press described it as: “Thee Temple Ov Psychick Youth, or TOPY, emerged from Britain’s industrial underground as a strange mix of occult network, performance art project and countercultural movement. Closely tied to Psychic TV and Genesis P-Orridge, it blurred the lines between music, ritual, media manipulation and social experiment. The press often struggled to define it, describing TOPY as everything from an anti cult to an anarchic art movement built on sigils, tape culture and radical ideas about identity and consciousness. Its use of ritual imagery, underground publishing and global ‘access points’ helped build an air of mystery that fed years of fascination and controversy. Writers frequently linked the group to figures such as Aleister Crowley and William S. Burroughs, placing it in a lineage of artistic and cultural disruption. Decades later, TOPY is still seen as one of the most provocative and influential movements to emerge from post industrial Britain.”

That’s about as close as most people got or will ever get, but we were on the inside and were the ones who eventually closed it all down. The mission was indeed terminated. This album revisits old topics with new eyes and ears, and celebrates our time with TOPY, separating lived experience from second hand mythology.