Alone at the top of Immortal Mountain sits the castle of the strange alchemist. Once praised for his sorcery by the village it towers over, one winter's morning he awoke to find in his possession the Psychic Circle - a glowing orb that showed him whatever his mind desired. Captured as if held in a trance by its wonder, the sorcerer couldn't break his gaze from the glowing orb. The garden of his mind had been poisoned and like vines pulled from a tree, the sanity was ripped from his wizard brain. In a state of pure chaos he began to unleash an onslaught of dark magick onto the village people that once praised him.
The Psychic Circle - the enigmatic duo of Tom McDowell (keys, synth, organ, mellotron) and Jack Harris (guitar, bass guitar) - deliver their debut album as a 70's odyssey of Moog-infused cosmic krautrock and psychedelic baroque. Written and recorded between 2019 and 2020, View From The Magician's Window channels saturated tones, fuzz guitars, baroque keys, and cosmic synthesizers over hypnotic motorik beats. A blend of giallo film score aesthetics meeting mind-bending psychedelia in what one listener described as "psychedelic krautrock theme from a seventies Italian horror movie over metronomic Tomorrow Never Knows drum loop."
McDowell, founder of Library of the Occult Records and core member of Dream Division, has assembled a sonic world that exists somewhere between Goblin's cinematic menace and Can's relentless drive, with touches of early King Crimson's progressive darkness. The fifteen tracks unfold like a lost soundtrack, moving from the opening invocation "Dawn of the Psychic Circle" through the hypnotic three-part title suite, arriving at closing piece "Wizard Fuzz" in a state of transformed consciousness.
The motorik rhythmic undertow (drums performed by J.D., with select tracks featuring John Simm/The Drum Tamer) provides the foundation for Harris's fuzz-drenched guitar explorations and McDowell's baroque keyboard architectures. Tracks like "Magick," "Winter Illumination," and "Six Swords of the Serpent" demonstrate the duo's ability to conjure dark electronic krautrock with a doom-laden edge, while pieces such as "The Garden of Your Mind" and "Strange Alchemy" reveal more introspective, meditative territories.
