HTRK - Psychic 9-5 Club

Label: Ghostly International – GI-204 LP
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Repress, Clear Pink Marble
Country: US
Released: April, 2014 / 2025 Repress
Genre: Electronic
Style: New Wave

Psychic 9-5 Club marked the beginning of a new chapter for HTRK — and it remains one of the most quietly extraordinary records to emerge from the Australian experimental underground in the past decade. Jonnine Standish and Nigel Yang's first album recorded entirely as a duo, it was shaped by the loss of former band member Sean Stewart, who died halfway through the recording of their previous LP, Work (Work Work). What could have been a record of pure grief became something more complex and more human — love, humour and hope found within the struggle, the flesh stripped from their sound and the focus thrown onto naked arrangements and minimalist sound design.

Recorded with Excepter's Nathan Corbin at Blazer Sound Studios in New Mexico, refined in Australia and finished in New York before being mastered by Rashad Becker at Dubplates and Mastering in Berlin, the album is instantly recognisable as HTRK while pushing the duo into entirely new territory. The reverb-soaked guitars of Marry Me Tonight and the fuzzy growls of Work (Work Work) are gone — replaced by something tender, velvety and polished. Standish's husky spoken-word drawl remains central but here she laughs and sings; Yang's dub-informed production sensibility is given full room to breathe. Love as distraction, loving yourself, loving others — dipped into with the kind of integrity that has marked HTRK from the very beginning. Back on clear pink marble vinyl for 2025.

A1. Give It Up
A2. Blue Sunshine
A3. Feels Like Love
A4. Soul Sleep
B1. Wet Dream
B2. Love Is Distraction
B3. Chinatown Style
B4. The Body You Deserve