The Liverpool International Festival of Psychedelia (a.k.a. Liverpool Psych Fest or PZYK) kicks into overdrive on September 22-23, celebrating artists operating at the cutting edge of today’s global psychedelic renaissance, alongside visual art, film, performance. and mind-expanding visual delights. Once again, masses of psychedelic activities will pack the warehouses and recesses of Camp & Furnace, Blade Factory + District in Liverpool’s so-called Baltic Triangle for a global psychedelic frenzy.

High on visual aesthetics, this festival combines post-industrial architecture with its acid house rave atmosphere and art gallery space with an awesome village community mentality. This cohesive approach makes for a breathtaking art installation that comes across like a psychedelic technicolor dream.

The 2017 program features an exciting opening party and launch events, exclusive pre-festival gig (headlined by New Jersey’s Ducktails, led by Real Estate guitarist Matt Mondanile), a film program, exclusive new virtual reality installations, daytime events, and an immersive late night audio visual experience, in addition to a month-long art exhibition developed on key visual themes and ideas present across this year’s aesthetic.

PZYK offers live performances interspersed with DJ sets. Headliners include Texas’ neo-psych band The Black Angels and Croydon space rock veterans Loop. The 2017 PZYK congregation also includes Lætitia Sadier, A Place To Bury Strangers, The KVB, The Telescopes, Songhoy Blues, Träd Gräs och Stenar,Träden, W.I.T.C.H. (We Intend To Cause Havoc), The Holydrug Couple, Wolf People,The Bug vs Dylan Carlson, Jane Weaver, Adrian Sherwood, Fujiya & Miyagi, The Comet is Coming, White Manna, GNOD, Endless Boogie, Sex Swing, Castles, In Bliss,Celestial Bums, and many more.

Following its inception in 2016, PZYK COLONY – an immersive, 360-degree audiovisual installation – will again transform the Camp warehouse space into a late-night shifting, geometric cube from 11pm to 3am throughout the festival. The live installation re-imagines this industrial space as an intense, singular light-emitting diode, a trance-den-cum-live-space, and will play host to much anticipated performances by The KVB, Loop, The Bug vs Dylan Carlson, Sex Swing, The Comet is Coming, and Adrian Sherwood.

California’s Castle Face Records will host a showcase called ‘Irregular Orbits’, which involves five bands from the label’s roster – Once & Future Band,Male Gaze, Magnetix, Duds, and Exit Group (Useless Eaters side project). A world-first for the label, which is now one of the world’s leading off-kilter psych music imprints.

PZYK presents a mix of international and homegrown artists providing a soundtrack to late September madness. The international diversity of this year’s acts are underlined by performances by Songhoy Blues (Mali), Laetitia Sadier and Acid Arab (France), Dans Dans(Belgium), The Holydrug Couple (Chile), Celestial Bums (Spain), White Manna (California), Julie’s Haircut (Italy), and Hurricane Heart Attacks (Argentina).

PZYK will also present a special Psychedelia In Film season, with screenings at FACT (Foundation for Art and Creative Technology) of a series of short films drawing on the theme of sensory overload and excess. The screenings will be accompanied by specially curated PZYKplaylists in the Picturehouse bar, plus a Q&A with PZYK organizers around the festival’s themes.

Festival-goers will also enjoy the Musings In Drone symposium, which is a tripped-out chat show, digging out the stories, tales and experiences of the artists, labels, and heads within today’s neo-psych scene. Hosted by audio-oracle Bernie Connor from the Sound Of Music podcast, this edition features Q&As with The Black Angels, collaboration with the #AUDiNT research cell (an investigation of sonic extremes in A Century Of Zombie Sound presentation), and W.I.T.C.H.’s Emmanuel ‘Jagari’ Chanda with collaborator Jacco Gardner. Matt Jonesof Castle Face Records will also talk about the label’s journey from the Californian underground to the world-class psych label it is today – and he will be joined by guests from the label’s roster.

As well, the organizers introduces PZYK SKAN, a major immersive AV installation, which is a brain-scanning-meets-audiovisual-extremes collaboration between Luciana Haill, Rob Strachan, PZYK AV, and #AUDiNT research cell.

More detailed information, as well as weekend and day tickets, are available from the Liverpool Psych Fest’s “official site”: http://liverpoolpsychfest.com