Psychic TV - Allegory & Self / Pagan Day
(Dais / Sacred Bones)

There are few bands with a discography as complicated or intimidating as that of Psychic TV. Luckily Sacred Bones has teamed up with Dais to reissue two of their earliest albums, 1984's Pagan Day and 1988's Allegory & Self. For a band that has over 200+ releases, the terms “official” and “unofficial” seem to blur into each other. Unofficial releases tend to muddy the waters so some attention should be given to the announcement of official repressings. For anyone who has been interested in getting their feet wet with this hugely influential group, now is your chance.
Psychic TV was formed from the ashes of the seminal industrial outfit Throbbing Gristle by founding members Genesis P-Orridge and Peter Christopherson. By 1984, Christopherson would go on to have formed COIL, another industrial music powerhouse, leaving Genesis P-Orridge with traditionally trained musician Alex Fergusson. He was capable of writing the fully fleshed out pop songs that began to appear over the course of the first two Psychic TV albums. That same year, Psychic TV released their third album Pagan Day. Recorded onto a 4 track cassette machine, Pagan Day would set the tone for the bipolar nature of the group. It's clear on this album that the goal of the band was to write actual songs as opposed to the noise collage tendencies of Throbbing Gristle. Not to say that the intent of the band was any less antagonistic, but they saw the value of doing damage to the system within the system itself. Pagan Day reflects this desire quite clearly through its bare bones / sunshine-goth tinged synth-pop.
Paired with Pagan Day, is 1988's Allegory & Self, which is considered to be Psychic TV's third “official” album. In between 1984 and 1988, the group released almost two dozen live albums that came out at a rapid pace, some in extremely small quantities. However, none of these were supposed to serve as a proper studio album. Allegory & Self achieves a sense of balance that would rarely appear again on another Psychic TV release combining  songs and industrial experiments. It seems to cull from every corner of influence and style represented by Psychic TV and it does so with a sense of ease that perfectly sums up the band’s approach. Nothing is off limits and everything is susceptible to hijacking by Psychic TV. (Adam)
Check out a track here.