VIDEO OF THE DAY: “KEN” BY EX COPS

In choosing a name for their debut full-length album, Brooklyn-based Ex Cops chose Terence McKenna’s 1993 tome True Hallucinations, which boasts the lofty subtitle Being an Account of the Author’s Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil’s Paradise. That book begins: “For thousands of years the visions imparted by hallucinogenic mushrooms have been sought and revered as a true religious mystery. Much of my thought over the past twenty or more years has been caught up in describing and contemplating this mystery.” Now, we are not claiming that Ex Cops, which was formed in 2011 by North Carolina’s Brian Harding and Denmark native Amalie Bruun, were on mushrooms or any other psychotropics that sent them into the devil’s domain when they were making the record; nor are we encouraging anyone to chomp on some ’shrooms before listening to the disc. But listen to True Hallucinations you should, no matter your state of mind, for it will transport you to another across its thirty minutes. The disc is the first official album released by Other Music, one of the city’s best record stores, whose first signing as a label was Ex Cops. The world of True Hallucinations is populated by the machine-gun rattle of “You Are a Lion, I Am a Lamb,” the beachy keen “Spring Break (Birthday Song),” the psychedelic “Jazz & Information,” the jangly “Billy Pressly,” the fuzzy “Nico Beast,” the very indie “Broken Chinese Chairz,” and the Asian/VU-influenced “The Millionaire.” On the video for “Ken,” the band pays tribute to the Replacements, whose classic videos for “Bastards of Young” and “Hold My Life” were each made in one continuous long shot of a speaker, a turntable, and a couch, the way music used to be heard, once upon a time. Harding and Bruun, joined by lead guitarist Kai Kennedy, bassist Leif Young Huckman, and drummer Sam Bair, will be headlining at Mercury Lounge on February 15 with Ski Lodge opening. Let the hallucinations begin.