The English band
Spacemen 3 was crucial for the
development of psychedelic music of the 1990s.
Taking a cue from the revolution started
by Jesus And Mary Chain,
the band that had rediscovered feedback and changed the
meaning of "guitar pop", Spacemen 3 achieved a dissonant
and hallucinatory sound that transformed the noise of a guitar into a kind of
spiritual exercise.
Playing guitars were Peter "Sonic Boom" Kember and
Jason Pierce, who had very little in common with the traditional idea of
a rock guitarist (if anything, they were more closely related to a sitar player).
If
Jimi Hendrix
had been a virtuoso of
"disrupting" a melody on the guitar, Boom and Pierce performed
a simple statistical operation on the noises that one can obtain from a guitar.
On bass was Pete "Bassman" Bain (who would later form
Darkside).
The group formed in 1982 at the art college of Rugby, a
town in the English countryside. The "songs" of Sound of Confusion
(Glass, July 1986; Fire, 1989; Taang 1994), including a series of
unrecognizable covers, still took inspiration from garage-rock (in particular
the Texan strain of
the Thirteenth Floor Elevators
and Red Crayola)
for
savage sarabands at the edge of the listenable range like O.D. Catastrophe,
nevertheless at a rhythmic pace that was never too fast.
A mixture of
Velvet Underground,
Stooges and
MC5
propelled songs such as
Losing Touch With My Mind.
Walkin' With Jesus (on the self-titled EP of
November 1986) already displayed a different style: this time it was the Velvet
Underground leading the show, and specifically the hyper percussives and distorted style of White Light, White Heat.
The same EP includes the sleepy, trancy Feel So Good and a 13-minute version of 13th Floor Elevator's
Rollercoaster.
Even on the mini-album Transparent Radiation (Glass, July 1987)
the sound was progressively losing cohesion, and the
guitarists were taking more lisergic "liberties":
the title-track is a whispered lullaby;
the nine-minute Ecstasy Symphony is a series of soft drones in slow
motion (a` la Schulze's cosmic music), radiating a sense of peace and
eastern meditation; Transparent Radiation Flashback is a neoclassical
remix of the title-track, with soothing violin and guitar;
Things Will Never Be The Same is a demonic threnody a` la Suicide;
and Starship is an 11-minute hyper-distorted version of Sun Ra's masterpiece.
The EP Take Me To The Other Side (jan 1988), contains the eponymous
garage-rock anthem, the hypnotized rhythm'n'blues fanfare of Soul,
and the fibrillating instrumental That's Just Fine.
These
three EPs were compiled on Singles (Taang, 1995).
The Perfect Perscription (Glass, Sep. 1987; Genius,
1988; Taang, 1996), which incorporates parts of Transparent Radiation
and
Walkin' With Jesus,
is a truly psychedelic concept album, because it
describes the stages one goes through during an overdose. That was
the album on which the two guitarists began to write songs that didn't sound
like their favorite classics.
Only
Take Me To The Other Side
sounds like a
typical Texan school anthem, and
Things'll Never Be The Same (from
the EP) retains something of the grim and distressed
minimalisms of
Suicide,
with one of the guitars
instead of an organ
digging vortices of neurosis.
The rest of the album is hallucinated above all by the
arrangements, that even employ
(within the usual guitar chaos) a plethora
of acoustic and electronic instruments (although very little percussion). The
verve of the early days had quickly drained out, and, in many moments
(e.g. Ecstasy Symphony, from the EP)
the overtones were purposefully those of a trance.
(Translated from my original Italian text by ChatGPT and Piero Scaruffi)
After the live album Performance and the addition of new bassist Willie Carruthers, the third album, Playing With Fire (Fire, 1988 – Bomp, 1989 – Taang, 1994), was released, bringing their recording techniques to their peak and perhaps remaining their masterpiece. The band had absorbed psychedelic music into an ethereal and transcendent minimalism. Honey (sweet), Suicide (hammering), and Revolution (explosive) were the three pillars around which the album revolved. Moving further away from the feedback-pop of the Jesus And Mary Chain, Spacemen 3 navigated toward an original “heroin gospel” (Let Me Down Gently, Lord Can You Hear Me, I Believe It) and a kind of ambient raga (How Does It Feel). This album gave rise to a school of hyper-psychedelia that would eventually converge with ambient music.
Their last "hit" was the single Hypnotized (1989), a haunting soul track that stands as another milestone in their “trance-rock” (complete with church organ and triumphant horns). But Kember (Spectrum), Pierce (Spiritualized), and Bassman (Darkside) had already begun parallel projects.
Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To (Father Yod Production, 1990 – Bomp, 1994) collects rarities and previously unreleased tracks.
Dreamweapon (Fierce, 1990 – Sympathy, 1993 – Space Age, 1995) is a live album containing a 45-minute improvisation for distorted guitars, An Evening Of Contemporary Sitar Music, explicitly dedicated to LaMonte Young. The hypnotic vibrations of one guitar duet with an Indian-inspired figure from the other guitar. The intensity of the duet rises and falls, but the variations are minimal and repeated endlessly. The album completed Spacemen 3’s trajectory—from honest disciples of the most expansive and distorted psychedelic rock (Red Crayola, Stooges) to pioneers of a music more akin to ambient than to rock. In a century, it might be regarded as their masterpiece.
Recurring (Dedicated, 1991 – Space Age, 2004) closed the band’s career on a minor note (it was recorded by the two guitarists in separate locations, practically one side each). More than a coherent work, it seems like a cauldron of unfinished notes: Big City is a
Kraftwerk-style dance-pop that has nothing to do with the band’s past; Why Couldn't I See is an equally anomalous raga-rock; Set Me Free resembles one of the Beatles’ psychedelic novelty tracks; I Love You is simply an unacknowledged cover of the classic Hang On Snoopy. The most conceptual track, Feelin' Just Fine, only hints at what they could do with these foundations. Perhaps the masterpiece is Feel So Sad, a ballad that sums up much of their work. Recurring is their most “retro” work and, not coincidentally, the least personal.
Like
Loop
and other shoegazers, Spacemen 3 had always been primarily an idea—the idea of “drones” around which to improvise simple, gentle melodies, following an Indian-inspired practice already explored by
Brian Eno
and Robert Fripp.
(Original English text by Piero Scaruffi)
Forged Prescriptions (Space Age, 2003) collects rarities.
DJ Tones (Space Age Recordings, 2008) collects rarities, including a
nine-minute version of Ecstacy Symphony.
For All The Fucked-Up Children Of This World (Space Age, 2017) released
the first 1984 sessions.
