The Sunshine Fix radiates with psychedelic sounds

By Anthony Bromberg
Daily Bruin Senior Staff

There is a place where music still streams through the
listener’s consciousness, evoking images filled with warmth,
surrealism, energized serenity and flowers. That place is beneath
the sun.

This is the sonic dream made by leaving on the headphones and
lying in the grass as the sun peaks over the horizon to start a new
day.

The sound that would be playing through the headphones on the
perpetually pleasant day would be the music of The Sunshine Fix.
Bill Doss, known for his work in Olivia Tremor Control, is the
force behind the sunshine sound. Doss fronts the project
that’s in the business of making psychedelic music for the
new millennium. Members of other bands in Doss’ hometown of
Athens, Georgia, appear on The Sunshine Fix’s recently
released first full-length album “The Age of the Sun.”
The album’s title track is in the movie “Birthday
Girl,” and Doss previously had a song on a “Powerpuff
Girls” CD under the name The Bill Doss.

The album hearkens back to a time of optimism in music, filled
with sounds inspired by the Beach Boys and Beatles, while also
looking forward and utilizing sounds firmly routed in the 21st
century. The sound of The Sunshine Fix is inextricably linked with
its primary member’s vision of music and the void it fills in
the world, and the psychedelic vibe which he expresses through
majestic images of the sun.

“A lot of it stems from just loving psychedelic music, and
the whole sun worship thing,” Doss said. “That goes
back generations, to tribes of bushmen that worship the sun because
they don’t know what it is. Or, even the Romans thinking that
it’s Apollo’s chariot riding across the sky. You know,
they make up all kinds of things about it because it’s
mysterious and nobody really understands it. And that’s a big
attraction too for me, just like the fact that it’s there and
it breathes life into everything on the planet, and yet it could
destroy us. If it were an inch closer we’d die. It’s
just weird, it’s a really bizarre object just sitting up
there and doing its thing.”

On The Sunshine Fix’s journey, the sun has just moved
slightly higher in the permanently blue sky.

Doss is a music lover himself and a true believer in the
psychedelic scene. Besides, the classic ’60s bands, he cites
current acts like Stereolab as carrying on the same psychedelic
vibrations, just in a different way. The Sunshine Fix functions on
a similar level, working to create music Doss can enjoy.

“I think it’s just eternal optimism, or just our
hopeless optimism. And I think it’s fighting depression too,
because I get sad a lot,” Doss said. “Yet, at the same
time, there’s another half of me that’s always going,
“˜Well, there’s nothing to be sad about, you know,
don’t be sad. Be happy, get up, and do the things
you’ve got to do.'”

The Sunshine Fix project carries out Doss’ love for the
psychedelic scene, which he says has never ceased to exist.

His music’s vintage harmonies and melodies attest to this
love, while carving out a unique voice in a scene that Doss feels
extends beyond “Abbey Road” and the Grateful Dead.The
electronic scene especially seems rife with opportunity to reawaken
a sunnier voice in music. This is reflected on “Age of the
Sun’s” last track, which is an ambient 20-minute
psychedelic voyage.

“I really love the idea of getting into that scene, I was
going to get a bunch of people to remix that last track for me and
then send it out to raves, and see if kids want to dance to
it,” Doss said.

The sun is now pushing itself further and further forward,
higher into the blue.

The music business as a whole can be a frustrating place for
Doss. The Sunshine Fix won’t be getting mainstream radio play
anytime soon, because its sound isn’t hi-fi enough, according
to Doss. Yet, the most important thing for Doss is to be able to
play a record for a friend, and have them dig it.

Doss prefers to dwell on the positive, and hopes that The
Sunshine Fix can capture that. He feels that a problem with all
recent generations has been a general overriding apathy. It bothers
him that no one cares about anything, especially when he sees so
much to enjoy in the world.

The psychedelic scene that Doss is a part of appeals to a
positivity that is absent from so much of modern culture. He wants
his music to be fun and make people smile, and encompass the
experience that a hippy has watching the sun suspended in the sky
in some wonderful dream.

“All that stuff, I think, is pretty timeless,” Doss
said.

“Unfortunately, because the ’60s became what they
became, even I don’t want to tap too much into that scene
like the whole hippy dippy trippy stuff, and burning incense, and
peace, love and happiness and all that. You don’t want to be
too obvious about it, because you get a bad rap with it. And it did
become kind of ridiculous and it still is, yet I still believe in
all that stuff, I really like it. Even though I don’t sit in
the dirt and play bongos, I can respect someone who
does.”