Spacemen 3

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.

Dopo il live Performance e l'ingresso del nuovo bassista Willie Carruthers, usci` il terzo album, Playing With Fire (Fire, 1988 - Bomp, 1989 - Taang, 1994), che porto` all'apice le loro tecniche di registrazione e rimane forse il loro capolavoro. Il gruppo ha metabolizzato la musica psichedelica in un minimalismo etereo e trascendente. Honey (dolcissima), Suicide (martellante) e Revolution (esplosiva) erano i tre capisaldi attorno a cui ruotava l'album. Sempre piu` lontani dal feedback-pop dei Jesus And Mary Chain, gli Spacemen 3 veleggiavano verso un originale gospel dell'eroina (Let Me Down Gently, Lord Can You Hear Me, I Believe It) e una sorta di raga ambientale (How Does It Feel). Con questo disco nacque una scuola di iper-psichedelia che avrebbe finito per convergere con la musica ambientale.

L'ultimo "successo" fu il singolo Hypnotized (1989), un soul struggente che costituisce un'altra pietra miliare del loro "trance-rock" (con tanto di organo da chiesa e fiati trionfali). Ma Kember (Spectrum), Pierce (Spiritualized) e Bassman (Darkside) avevano ormai avviato formazioni parallele.

Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs To (Father Yod Production, 1990 - Bomp, 1994) raccoglie rarita` e inediti.

Dreamweapon (Fierce, 1990 - Sympathy, 1993 - Space Age, 1995) e` un live che contiene un'improvvisazione di 45 minuti per chitarre distorte, An Evening Of Contemporary Sitar Music, esplicitamente dedicata a LaMonte Young. Le vibrazioni ipnotiche di una chitarra duettano con una figura indianeggiante dell'altra chitarra. L'intensita` del duetto cresce e diminuisce, ma le variazioni sono minime e ripetute all'infinito. Il disco completava la parabola degli Spacemen 3, da onesti discepoli del rock psichedelico piu` dilatato e distorto (Red Crayola, Stooges) a pionieri di una musica piu` simile a quella ambientale che a quella rock. Fra un secolo potrebbe essere considerato il loro capolavoro.

Recurring (Dedicated, 1991 - Space Age, 2004) chiuse la carriera del gruppo in tono minore (venne registrato dai due chitarristi in sedi separate, praticamente una facciata per ciascuno). Piu` che un'opera coerente sembra un calderone di appunti rimasti in sospeso: Big City e` un dancepop per sequencer alla Kraftwerk che non ha nulla a che fare con il passato del gruppo; Why Couldn't I See e` un raga-rock altrettanto anomalo; Set Me Free sembra una delle novelty psichedeliche dei Beatles; I Love You e` semplicemente una cover non dichiarata del classico Hang On Snoopy. Il brano piu` concettuale, Feelin' Just Fine, lascia soltanto intravedere cosa potrebbero fare su queste basi. Il capolavoro e` forse Feel So Sad, una ballad che riassume un po' tutta la loro opera. Recurring e` il loro lavoro piu` "retro`" e non a caso il meno personale.

Anche gli Spacemen 3, come i Loop e gli altri shoegazer, erano stati soprattutto un'idea, l'idea di "droni" attorno a cui improvvisare melodie semplici e gentili, secondo una prassi indiana gia` sfruttata da Brian Eno e Robert Fripp.

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.