When people describe 21st century psychedelic music as “lo-fi,” are they talking about the ends of that music–what we hear–or the means that go into its creation? I think that most people use the term to signal a certain sound: the golden, degraded, passed-twenty-times-over-a-cassette-recorder aesthetic, minted by acts like Ariel Pink and The Skaters and forming a primary earmark of what David Keenan recently termed “hypnagogic pop.” But let us not forget that there are millenial psychedelic artists who employ equally “lo-fi” recording technologies without necessarily building a shrine to the crackle and warp of low-fidelity.
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