Corners of the Sky, a Kansas City-based psychedelic rock band, just released their EP "Electrify Your Mind" on February 7. The EP is the follow up to the band's 2024 singles "The Oracle" and "Psychedelic Cat/Wax".
LP: Let’s break down the EP track by track.
Corners of the Sky: Track 1 “Electrify Your Mind” was inspired by the riff in TheeOhSees’ “The Dream”. It also started off as a solo jam where I just let ideas fly and the pre-chorus part was born from that. Tried to incorporate a King Gizzard Mind Fuzz influence during the jammy section. It’s about drugs and how they probably aren’t so good for our heads, but, hey, they’re fun.
Track 2 “The Tunnel,” I guess, could be about what happens after all that drug use. Definitely wanted a song that had “oh” and “ah” type singing and the “wawawawa” part was the result.
Track 3 “White Sunlight” was a random riff that popped into my head during a shower. Frankie and the Witch Fingers had just released “Electricide” as a single so that kind of fast energy was swirling around in my brain I bet. I wanted something similar but my own with something to scream. Wrote down some bullshit words that rhythmically fit what I was hearing in my noggin.
Track 4 “Finders Keepers” is a short and sweet 2-chord song. Since it’s two chords you can kinda dig into the attitude of the song more.
Track 5 “Sweat Your Sweat” is a song appreciating the phenomenon of moshing. I tried my best to incorporate at least bits of the sound that makes me want to fuck shit up. Tritones are all tension, and that song has a lot of tension and release built into it. But definitely one of the few songs where it’s meant to be ramped up to 10.
Track 6 “Black Lung” started with the simple rhyme of the lyrics. Rare instance of lyrics first. A couple months passed, and I wrote a chord progression that fit rhythmically with how the lyrics should be said. Smoking is bad for your health, and you shouldn’t do it, but fuck it, live your life so do what you want.
LP: What was the recording / writing process like?
CotS: We used a combination of Kyle’s Focusrite interface to record drums and my Zoom livestock mixer to record guitars and such. We were wanting a consistent sound so we knocked the recordings out in a few days. Then we overdubbed and double tracked some guitars after the main meat (drum, bass, and guitar) of the song was recorded. Tried different things for vocals. Some songs use regular mics, one uses the telephone mic; for “Finders Keepers,” I ran a microphone through my Yamaha guitar amp with the reverb cranked in a hallway. Final thing added to each song was tambourine.
LP: Were there any challenges when it came to making the EP?
CotS: Trying to get mix right for each song was probably the most challenging bit because of how picky I am. Constant remixing, trying new methods, trying different EQs, and making changes so that everyone in the band is happy with the end result.
LP: Favorite band Memory of last year - now?
Cots: Our most fond band memory was definitely creating and playing at a new DIY venue in Jake’s basement. We call it the “Antfarm”. The name was created by our good friend Cohen mainly because the hallways in the basement greatly resemble, well… an antfarm. We played our first show there back in November 2024 and it was an absolute success. We had a great turnout and just absolutely partied our hearts out. Ever since the first show we had improved on making a venue a venue. We typically record the band's audio at every show, have a projector to display whatever the performing band would like, and even have rap nights. It is a true rager!
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