Horsham's Psycho Babble play first gig in more than two years

The five-piece, who have toured with artists including The Bluetones, Soundtrack of Our Lives, The Rifles, SLF, Shed Seven, The Undertones and Inspiral Carpets, play Horsham’s Rec Rooms on February 11.

The band’s eclectic range of material draws from the 60s, punk, garage, soul and contemporary influences – and they can’t wait to get back to it.

Band member Andy Ruff said: “It has been such a long time. It has been awful really. You just want to get out there and play but also at the same time you are writing new material and you want to get that out as well and you just haven’t got any outlets.

“We were just getting ready to work on our new album when the first lockdown happened. It was just a few days after we had finished the album and we were going to start mixing and producing but lockdown came and stopped us. It was really difficult. We were building up the momentum of work on the project.

“We did what we could but there was no knowing when we could get it out physically so we decided instead of finishing the album that we would just mix what we could and start to release a single every month throughout the lockdown until we ran out of funds. We released nine tracks and we’ve still got a few tracks left. That was from May 2020 through into 2021. And people did respond. We had some good reactions to the material, some of it better than others. It’s like with anything. Some things appeal to more people than others but it was quite an eclectic range of stuff.

“We couldn’t physically manufacture vinyl but we did lots of things and we learnt an awful lot. I did some of the mixing myself and we also had a producer that was working remotely. The joy of modern technology allowed us to speak to each other on Zoom and upload stuff to dropbox.”

As for whether that album will now get released as an album, Andy is not so sure: “The album was two years ago and it feels like we have moved on again. We are a DIY cottage industry where our music is concerned. We don’t get an advance on anything. We use the gig money to keep us going and we have an account where we run the gig money through. We don’t take anything out of it for ourselves. We just plough it back into the band. So we’re thinking about doing a new album but that will have to be once we start getting some gig money in again.

“But I am a very positive person. I have always thought one of our songs, Keep On Keeping On, is like the ethos of the band – that we do keep on going. We’ve been through a lot of things as a band over the years and people come and go. And the benefit to that is that new people bring fresh ideas and a new feel to it all.

“But I did manage to learn to mix during the lockdowns. I spent hours locked in a room not coming out for days. My wife was starting to wonder if I still existed in there! She said ‘I never see him!’ But I have got to be creative and I have done a lot more things.

“I have done a lot more writing. I even took a course in screenplay writing, but the good thing is that when you’ve got time that is given to you, you have got the time to do things that you would really not have thought of doing otherwise.

“I’ve always been interested in writing and I’ve got a couple of ideas that I’d like to develop into stuff as well as writing the songs. But it’s going to be great to get back to gigging.”

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