Psychedelic Sounds For The Soul: Morgan Delt-Psychedelic Sounds from Topanga Hills-An Interview

Alright for those of you who have never heard the name of Morgan Delt ,let me give you some info.
He Created one of the most underground and mysterious psychedelic records of 2012,with likes to Velvet Underground,Ennio Morricone and the whole spectrum of how Psychedelia sounds with a modern touch.

In July i found Morgan and we discussed for many and interesting things about his music and life in general.
Here is my interview with him:

1.Alright Morgan if someone wants to listen to your music he can, but he can't find no more info about you,why is that?

I Don't know, I guess I haven't done any interviews or anything yet. So hopefully this will change that!

2.Who's Morgan Delt what is his daily job?

I'm a graphic designer.

3.What do you think about this Psychedelic Movement that has started to spread from California?
Many many bands play psychedelic and garage music do you see gigs often in the city?

Yeah, I think it's great! it seems like I'm discovering some new great band every week. I don't go to a ton of shows, but I do sometimes.

4.You as Morgan Delt, did you had any previous side project or a band before?

I've recorded a lot of stuff at home before but none of it was really any good. I tried a lot of different things. And I've played in a couple of casual bands with friends over the years but nothing serious.

5.It never went any further with the bands you were in?

Nah, just you know jam with some friends. Maybe play a party or two and then get into an argument about something dumb and break up.
I'm not so great about working with other people.I'm kind of a control freak.

I like working alone. I pretty much just stay in my studio all the time and don't go out much. I'm kind of a hermit that way.

6.Me as a listener i have listened to many many psychedelic music,experimental stuff,obscure,cult psych,folk,but when i heard the album you made,i said,what the fuck is this,how did he do that?
He mixed Morricone with Velvet Underground and Shoegaze music and Broadcast and Cult Psychedelic Music.

Everything is in there,and it's like listening to someone's brain this album can't have been made from a band.

Thanks, that's a nice description! I don't think all of those things were intentional but I've definitely listened to and absorbed all of that stuff you mention. It's interesting to hear the references that people come up with because they almost always right but a lot of the time it's stuff that I didn't even realize I was influenced by or I didn't realize you could hear it in my music. So it's fun to know what other people hear in it.

7.From the things you told me,you started to make the album,after you were done with bands cause you wanted to put out the sounds you had in your brain,is that right?

Well not quite. I kind of gave up on playing with other people a long time ago, but I've always done home recording on my own since I was a kid.But I made lots of different stuff. Mostly instrumental music, electronic music, noise, but I always missed singing and for some reason I never really got serious about writing songs until a couple of years ago.So I guess I'm all over the place and into a lot of different things but it took a while for me to figure out what I wanted to do and for it all to come together into something that made sense.

9.Do you believe in god?

10.About the album now how many years did it take to make,or months i don't know.

I don't know if I should say! I'm pretty slow. I'm trying to figure out how to work faster.

But those 6 songs took about a year to record.

11.Everything was recorded to your house?

Tell me about the equipment you used.

I record everything with an old EV dynamic mic. The gear I used the most was probably a Fender Mustang, Vox AC-15, Hiwatt tape delay, an old tape machine, and Ableton Live.

12.Is the album a sort of chapters songs,about a tale that starts from start and finishes somewhere?

Maybe all part of the same world though in kind of an abstract way.

13.I am pretty sure that you are influenced from 60's obscure films,60's psychedelic music,when you were writing the album what were you listening to?

Yeah, I'm definitely inspired a lot by movies. David Cronenberg, old AIP movies, Kenneth Anger, Ken Russell, and stuff like that.

What I'm listening to at any time doesn't really reflect in my music though. A lot of the influences that people say they hear is stuff that I listened to years ago. I'm not sure what I was listening to while working on it.

14.Do You Dig Cults?

I can't say that I dig them because in reality cults do horrible things to people, but they are morbidly fascinating aren't they? Cults are like an extreme version a dynamic that happens all over the place in life though from bands to politics, families, workplaces, mainstream churches, or any place where people abuse power.But the aesthetics of something like the Process Church or the Source Family are kind of interesting too.

15.When i listened to Barbarian Kings i couldn't think of anything else than cult movies,Lucifer Rising,naked girls dancing with blood in their hands and all that.It's like you're witnessing a murder on your drunken haze,but in your dreams,what does the song talks about?

I did have a story in mind with that song. I don't want to say too much about it though because what people imagine is usually more interesting. Your version is better!

17.But you can witness and some madness inside it,it's like fiction,in music you can use yourself as a fiction character who describes and tastes things that only his mind can think,did you do that a little?

I guess so. Barbarian Kings is definitely a story song. Tropicana is based on the book Quake by Rudy Wurlitzer. But all of the others are based on pretty specific personal situations.

18.What books influenced your music?

I like writers like Philip K Dick, Terry Southern, Jim Thompson, Rene Daumal.

I like trashy stuff like weird sci-fi, hardboiled crime novels, and hippy dippy stuff too.

19.Do you live to a hill or somehwere?

Yeah, I live in Topanga which is outside of LA in the mountains.

Mountains are pretty inspiring. It's weird. I go walk around them every day and they definitely have some kind of strange power over people. There's some kind of symbolic thing about climbing a mountain that's hard wired into our DNA I guess.

20.What are your main influences?

Lots of different stuff. Curt Boettcher, Burt Bacharach, the Wrecking Crew, Faust, Sun Ra, Brigitte Fontaine, The Move, The Ventures, I don't know, I could go on and on.
Funkadelic, Todd Rundgren, Franco Battiato, Jean Claude Vannier

Boredoms, Stereolab.

21.What Psychedelia means to you,in your own terms.

Well, I like to think that some music can transport the listener to another place, another time, or another state of mind. Some of that is called psychedelic music, some of it isn't, but there really isn't a better term for it I guess.

22.Except from music,, in your life, as a character,are you a dreamer?

Yeah, I probably only have one foot in reality most of the time.I like fantasy and dreams and escapism. A lot of people talk about escapism as if it's a bad thing but in some ways I think it's one of the greatest things that art can accomplish.To make you forget yourself for a minute.

23.Are you recording a new album?

I just finished a new song for the B side of a 7" which just came out from Trouble In Mind records. Then I'm working on a bunch of new songs to expand the E.P. out into a full length which will come out later.

24.What do you have to say to someone that wants to listen to your music?

Thanks for listening!

I just think it's cool that anyone wants to listen to it or is interested at all.

25.Do you listen to new Bands?Name a Few.

I Love Tim Cohen's Magic Trick, White Fence, Maston, Amen Dunes, Sam Flax, Thee Oh Sees, Sun Araw, Jacco Gardner, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Zomes, Quichenight

Lots of great music being made right now.