‘Grip your heart, shine always, write your tale, free’
Psychonaut: someone who intentionally uses mind altering methods to explore and investigate the human psyche. They hope to attain spiritual growth, embark on a journey of self-discovery and understand their own mind in more depth.
With song titles like ‘Everything Else Is Just the Weather’ and ‘You Are The Sky’ there is something to be said about challenging our thoughts, the processes we generally apply during our daily grind. Not many of us will step out of our box and into the freefalling world of lucid dreaming and medicating ourselves with hallucinogens or entheogens.
Meet our Belgian friends Psychonaut, coming to us with their third album, a study of life and loss. Our journeys through this realm – and indeed any other realm- are full of surprises, drama, tension, warmth and sorrow. To find yourself in a situation between life and death can be as harrowing as it is anticipatory in both instances, you are on the brink of both good and bad. This is exactly where singer/guitarist and creator of this album, Stefan de Graef found himself. Torn between the birth of his son and the heartbreaking cancer diagnosis of his father, you can imagine being pulled in opposite directions and having to reassess your position. Together with his bandmates, Thomas Michiels – bass/vocals and Harm Peters on drums they have produced a collection of songs that give us a conflict of emotions, a veritable tidal wave if you will, we swim on these ‘Endless Currents’ and we collide into the first of its kind ‘mosh in the meadow’ dreamy and seemingly oblivious to the probability of horrors ahead.
The fragrant tones of ‘And you Came With Searing Light’ are a cry, a signal to rejoice and revive ourselves, our anxieties are valid, but we should work through them and not let them rule us.
The son, the saviour, our saviour kindles thoughts of a life we have left behind, and it is time to rebuild using those ideas of kindness, empathy and fairness. The lyrics to ‘Stargazer’ read like a motivational handbook inspiring us to ‘tear your cage open’ and ‘be all you can’ but sometimes they are just words that we find impossible to shape into action. We need to allow for differences, work together and empower our individuality so we are aligned, and walking the same path to a better tomorrow.
The album has nature at its heart. How nature hurts, it gives hope, and it heals if afforded the responsibility and respectability it deserves. Being swept up on ‘Endless Currents’ we prepare for ‘Endless Erosion’ a time when we destabilise in order to reaffirm and awaken. The lights, shadows and slow motion effects are concurrent yet evasive, dictating and diverting our impulses and brain activity. A very thoughtful and sensible album, assembled with conformity and unity in mind, without oppression and without degradation.
With optimal tinkering and twiddling, it is bound to wash up all kinds of moments which with time will become memories. An alliance with nature is a pact that will nourish and nurture our presence on this earth.
All things that make and break our world, we are all different yet the same, you know the saying, there’s naut as queer as folk.
Azra Pathan
Psychonaut – World Maker out 24th October2025 via Pelagic Records