Spacemen 3 - The Sound of Confusion

There are bands that go almost unnoticed while they're alive, yet leave a deep mark with their passing. Signposts toward paths that other musicians would later follow. Spacemen 3 were one of those acts that left such a trail behind them. Their way of playing has always flowed like an underground current that, bit by bit, met and fed streams, brooks, rivers. More or less pervading everything that would emerge in rock during the 90s, the Spacemen anticipated by a few years the various rediscoveries, directions, sounds and attitudes that would define the music scene of the century's final decade.

There's no way to know exactly to what extent, but their being ahead of their time comes down to two reasons. The first lies in having shown a path that a portion of subsequent rock would go on to follow. The second is a rereading, in a new and personal key, of everything that came before them. The most significant trait of their universe, and a peculiarity of the years that followed them. Starting in the 90s, music, rather than moving forward through revolutions or progress, began forming out of elements drawn from the whole of past history, combined differently and blended with other genres. In this, the three Astronauts offered an important lesson. Devoured and remixed, the music of past decades then poured out as a different and deeply personal sound. Their entire body of work is scattered with covers, with more or less veiled quotations of other people's songs: fragments of "other" compositions on which they then built their own sound.

Sound of Confusion, the sound of confusion: a definition that alone could suffice to explain the whole Spacemen 3 universe. Heavily steeped in drugs, they retrace the path of psychedelia to turn it into a stylistic formula no longer devoted to a journey toward outer space, but one that plunges into an inner universe. A cosmos in which the senses are clouded, left to drift, waiting for a gap through which to escape. An escape no longer meant to become one with the world, but to flee one's own problems, the horror one feels. Music that aims almost more to be curative, to transcend the world in order to draw closer to God and salvation (as in spirituals and gospel).

The use of substances changes: from acid to heroin. If the former opens the door to strange, liquid visions, the latter mostly leaves one apathetic, narcotized. It's no coincidence that Spacemen 3 would be lumped into that shoegaze cauldron whose only common trait was that the musicians stared at their shoes while playing, a rather detached attitude geared toward introversion. The effect of the journey into inner recesses pursued by the band is achieved through a path that owes as much to minimalist repetition as to the use of feedback. In their dirtiest, most driving tracks these two elements manage to merge perfectly to create a kind of noise-driven raga-trance. What allows noise and minimalism to coexist is the attempt to create a hypnotic monotony that alters the state of consciousness through repetition. This result is achieved both when the sounds are bare and stripped down, and when the tracks become much noisier. In both cases, it's the constant perpetuation of a single note, or a single piece of feedback, onto which micro-variations are then grafted, that creates this effect.

Imperceptible details and references produce the changes in melodic structures; listening becomes entirely focused on perceiving these infinitesimal alterations, but in doing so, it also gets ensnared by the hypnotic repetition of a line. A process that Kember describes as "minimalism that is maximalism".

Formed in Rugby, England, in 1982 from the meeting of Jason Pierce and Peter "Sonic Boom" Kember (the only two true members of the band), they quickly built up a following with shows made up of wall of sound and unusually long running times (for the era). A record label (Glass), however, wouldn't sign them until 1986.

Released in June '86, Sound Of Confusion is the first recorded sign of life from Spacemen 3. Alongside the two aforementioned members, the band also features bassist Pete "Bassman" Bain (present on the first two albums) and drummer Natty Brooker (also later replaced).

The album is still fairly raw and more monochromatic compared to their later work, but it contains many of the elements that would make their fortune on the two following records. Inspired only in part (their influence is often overstated) by the distortion of the Jesus and Mary Chain, Sound Of Confusion is mostly made up of psychedelic tracks built on dissonant guitars. At first glance this might not seem like anything especially new, but it's worth stressing that the feedback here, rather than being layered and built up into stratified textures, is reiterated and plays entirely on repetition, creating a trance effect rather than an all-out noise assault.

Nothing groundbreaking, then, but still a container full of excellent songs. It's worth noting that it includes three covers ("Rollercoaster" by 13th Floor Elevator, "Just One Time" by Juicy Lucy, here retitled "Mary Anne", and "Little Doll" by the Stooges) transfigured under the Spacemen 3 brand, already a statement of intent showing where they came from and where they wanted to go. A droning hiss grows until the fire of "Losing Touch With My Mind" bursts into flame, a sonic bacchanal that already carries the imprint of a classic band song. "Hey Man" shows that the influence of Black American music isn't entirely absent from the group's background either: built entirely on a bassline and a tremolo guitar, it edges into territory bordering on religious music, with that "Hey Man" chanted so as to sound like an "Amen" left hanging, reaching skyward. Just when it seemed we might take off on a celestial journey, "Rollercoaster" brings us straight back down to earth: stripped of the Texan garage acidity of Roky Erickson and co., slowed down and transformed into a lethargic psych-noise ride, it now resembles an obsessive nightmare more than a lysergic dream. "Mary Anne" covers the fluidity of the original with a deafening drone (which stays in the background throughout the song) and hardens the dreamlike atmosphere with dirty guitars and a flat, cocky-sounding monotone vocal. "Little Doll" keeps the pace of the Iggy and co. original, but strips away its punk impetuousness, drowning it beneath a wash of feedback; the Stooges' wild riffs are sedated and stripped of their animalistic charge, just as the pounding drums slow down and lose their urgency.

"2:35" is a dirty blues that often strays into noise territory. That noise finally wins out on "O.D. Catastrophe", which closes the album. The sound of confusion explodes in all its rawness: a furious, triumphant din of distortion repeated over an almost motorik beat. A sound at times on the edge of audibility, striking and disorienting both for its slowed-down rhythms and for the disorientation generated by the wall of distortion.

Still rough around the edges, but a very fine showing, Sound Of Confusion holds within it the most garage-like, abrasive soul of Spacemen 3, albeit a roughness that's already polished and, already, hazy.

In November '86 came the EP Walking With Jesus. It contains just three tracks, but the total running time approaches half an hour. The title track picks up the earlier fuzz distortion, slightly speeding up its pace. On "Feel So Good" the tempo stretches out and becomes almost soporific, drifting between an especially ethereal vocal and instruments played to produce silence. This is the first sign of the shift they were about to make. Both of these songs would later be reworked on the following album, with "Walking With Jesus" in particular being radically changed. Between the two tracks sits a 17-minute live version of "Rollercoaster", even more unhinged and free-form than the one on Sound Of Confusion, and probably the best version of all.

In July 1987 came the other EP, Transparent Radiation, shortly ahead of the band's second official album, The Perfect Prescription, one of the two peaks of their output and also their best-known work. It's a highly sui generis concept album: not tied together by any narrative thread, but structured around the various phases of a drug trip. The sound evolves radically: the garage-fuelled outbursts become rarer and more evanescent. A thick droning fog settles in, blurring and confusing the view. Immersed in vapors where the senses grow dim and movements become sluggish, the rhythms slow down, muffled by atmospheres closer to stasis than to motion. The needle goes in the vein, euphoria flows along with the drug entering the bloodstream.

"Take Me To The Other Side" is a noisy trance loaded with energy, outlined by a looping guitar in the background and another busy painting a noise-rock minimalism. The head grows lighter, the view begins to blur. "Walking With Jesus" slows the pace, propped up by two repeated organ notes and an acoustic guitar, diluting the initial assault into a psychedelic haze. "Ode To Street Hassle" is a slow-motion blues, resting Lou Reed's vocal over a carpet woven from a theme repeated endlessly. By now we're deep inside the trip, adrift, floating in that airless void that is the "Ecstasy Simphony"-"Transparent Radiation" pairing, the latter coming straight from the Red Crayola camp: wrapped in violin drones, a handful of guitar notes and a voice that's about as distant and muffled as it gets, it drifts toward the territory of a certain isolationist ambient music.

"Feel So Good" is another two-chord blues, joined by a faint trumpet echoing in the distance. The effects of the drugs start to fade, and the band begins to climb out of the catatonic state, which slowly gives way to a phase of confusion. That's "Things'll Never Be The Same": a delirium induced through feedback, spinning in a vortex of pure noise. Just when the trip seemed close to ending, though, we find ourselves slowly sinking back into it on "Come Down Easy", another minimalist psychedelic ballad. The trip finally reaches the point of no return on "Call The Doctor", where impressionistic guitar bursts and an utterly spent vocal abandon body and spirit to drift away. The collapse of hope, now calling only for a doctor, whether because the end is near or because another perfect prescription is needed. And so the perfect prescription is complete: a curative remedy made from a blend of drugs, hypnotic trances and loss of consciousness.

Although the record can be considered complete here, it's impossible to draw up a definitive tracklist, given the various reissues that have kept adding tracks taken from EPs and singles of the period. Among all the additions one can find, worth mentioning at least are "Starship" (a cover of MC5), and "That's Just Fine", an essential, hypnotic blues.

In July '88 came the live album Performance, recorded in February in Amsterdam. It shows the band's wilder, noisier side, an aspect they would increasingly favor in their live shows compared to their studio work. Dominating everything are the noisy guitar distortions, which literally bury both the rhythm section and the vocals. All their classics are here (by now the covers can be called that too): from "Things'll Never Be The Same" to "Take Me To The Other Side", "Rollercoaster", "Walkin' With Jesus".

Exactly a year later (February 1989), having landed on the new label Fire, the band released its third studio record: Playing With Fire, which reached number one on the UK independent charts. The harmony between the two leaders was starting to crack: only one track now bears both their names, while the others are credited either to Kember or to Pierce. The sound becomes even more rarefied, the already sparse percussion all but vanishes, and the songs increasingly rest on cycles of repeated notes, which now also find in keyboards an extra element for building atmosphere. The psychedelia becomes definitively minimal, incorporeal, transcendent, both in the calmer, softer tracks and, by now, even in the more explosive, thunderous ones.

Spacemen 3 build songs on melodies that don't really exist. They pushed the thinning-out of their music even further. Now all that's left is a cloud of sound, over which the vocals and lyrics are laid. A process that could be pushed even further, all the way to eliminating words altogether, but which the group still kept within the bounds of language (evidence of the results they might have reached had they not stopped along this path can be found on the posthumous Dreamweapon). It would fall to others to pick up this interrupted path and carry it forward.

The first part of the album is made up entirely of these impalpable, atmospheric sounds. "Honey" is the melody of a love song drifting away, reflected in the reverb of the instruments. On "Come Down Softly To My Soul" Pierce's vocal grows as ethereal as the guitar lines and the violin airs. "How Does It Feel?" is the album's most minimalist track, built on the interlocking of a guitar repeating the same riff endlessly and a short melody produced by another: it spins in place with no direction for all of its eight minutes. It grows slowly but never explodes. "I Believe It" is a choral chant carried by a single voice over an organ theme, which in its final section takes on an urgent momentum (by the standard they've accustomed us to, at least). The slightly accelerated pace of the coda ramps things up considerably with "Revolution", which brings the wall of sound back into the picture: a single guitar chord, backed by primitive drumming and Kember's angry voice — this is their revolution.

"Let Me Down Gently" returns to the hazy atmospheres of the album's first half, fading out the already precarious contours of the track. "So Hot" is a whispered prayer over a barely sketched sonic backdrop: gospel music for a community handed heroin instead of the host. The record's mood is torn apart once again by the noise-rock assault of "Suicide" (a clear homage to the New York duo), a relentless hammering that overwhelms the listener amid drones of feedback, organ and drums. Across these 11 minutes the album reaches its orgiastic climax. As if repenting for the hell just unleashed, or perhaps ironically wondering whether even now the Lord is listening, comes the invocation of "Lord, Can You Here Me?", which finally weds psychedelia to gospel music.

In the original release the album would end here, but the 1994 CD reissue on Taang brings along four more notable tracks (also included in nearly all later reissues). The first is a live version of "Suicide", even wilder and murkier than the studio take, just as the following "Repeter (How Does It Feel?)" is a live rendition that gives "How Does It Feel?", heard earlier, an extra jolt of energy. The new additions are "Che", a completely unrecognizable cover of the Suicide track, and "May The Circle Be Unbroken", a traditional that, while still carrying traces of Spacemen vapors, remains fairly unremarkable.

Among the high points of the Pierce-Kember partnership, Playing With Fire hands the '90s two of its most important strands: a stripped-down rock, almost bordering on ambient, where atmosphere prevails over melody; and a psychedelic journey now induced through hypnosis via repetition, dissonant reverb and walls of feedback (Bardo Pond and many noise/drone psychedelic bands would take notes from this).

Meanwhile, the paths of the two leaders begin to diverge: between the release of Playing With Fire and the following album, both put out solo productions entirely detached from Spacemen 3. Jason Pierce releases a single with Spiritualized, while Peter "Sonic Boom" Kember records his first solo album under the moniker Spectrum.

By now completely at odds, "Sonic Boom" and Jason Pierce bring their shared adventure to a close in '91 with the album Recurring. In truth, although it still bears the Spacemen 3 name, this is a record split evenly down the middle. The first half contains only "Boom"'s tracks, the second only Pierce's. The two never met during the recording sessions, and each completed his own compositions without the slightest input from the other. The album's first half shifts the trance of their earlier records toward dancefloor grooves and pop melodies. "Big City" pairs electronic drums and Kraftwerk-style keyboards to create a slowed-down techno track, its bpm running more at dub speed than dance speed. "Just To See You Smile" picks up the sound of a "Honey" and immerses it in a fairy-tale calm. "I Love You" is a pop love song in the most classic of formulas.

"Set Me Free, I've Got The Key" is a meeting point between a flawless Beatles–Beach Boys-style pop harmony and a pulsing drone. "Why Couldn't I See" brings electronics back into the picture, hybridizing a typical Spacemen 3 structure with icy synthesizers.

The first side is poorly realized, fragmentary and out of focus. It feels more like a notebook of sketches than a properly finished work. The second half is better. It picks back up the mood of their earlier records, pushing it even further toward mystical prayer. This is the path Pierce would go on to pursue extensively with his Spiritualized, and here we can already glimpse its beginnings. Such is the case with "Feel So Sad", where for the first time Pierce gives full rein to his idea of gospedelia, laying a choir over a minimal sonic backdrop. "Hypnotized" widens the musical spectrum considerably, creating an orchestral soul piece with church organs and a horn section. "Sometimes" is a stripped-down, narcoleptic blues. "Feelin' Just Fine (Head Full Of Shit)" continues in the vein of a soul left to dissipate amid ecstatic reverb. "Billy Whizz/Blue 1" returns to the minimal blues terrain found on The Perfect Prescription, stretching it even further toward ambient.

Overall, a farewell that doesn't live up to what Spacemen 3 had achieved before. More important, both for Pierce and for Boom, as a testing ground for ideas they would carry into their future careers than as a continuation of the band's own path. In fact, it's in 1990 (before the release of Recurring) that Spacemen 3 definitively broke up.

The two leaders parted ways with grudges and tensions that remain unresolved to this day, suggesting that a reunion, even for purely financial reasons, would be very difficult. Meanwhile their paths carried on. Jason Pierce's, with greater success, continued through Spiritualized the attempt to merge music of religious origin with psychedelic rock. "Sonic Boom" took on various projects, both as a solo artist and along the path of musical experimentation with Experimental Audio Research.

Following the definitive split, over the years bootlegs, unofficial albums and compilations have piled up, feeding an uncatalogable mass of releases under the Spacemen 3 name, to the point that it's almost impossible to compile a proper discography of unofficial releases.

One release that can't be overlooked, though, is at least the live album Dreamweapon: An Evening Of Contemporary Sitar Music, probably the most avant-garde thing the band ever did. Predating the group's unofficial releases, it's also one of the high points of their entire body of work (official and otherwise). Recorded live at the Waterman's Art Center in Brentford in 1988, the album contains three long tracks, for a total running time of 70 minutes. The idea of altering consciousness through hypnosis induced by monotony reaches its fullest realization here. Built entirely on uninterrupted repetitions of short note sequences (mostly drawn from tracks in their repertoire) and minimal variations repeated endlessly, the three compositions wear down the listener's defenses with sheer tedium, only to then be free to carry them into a deep trance state. The emblematic piece is the first, "An Evening Of Contemporary Sitar Music", which is essentially an unrelenting 44-minute loop built around the themes of "Honey" and "How Does It Feel?" run through delay.

The proliferation of unofficial releases has only deepened the cult surrounding Spacemen 3 and allowed their music to reach a wider audience. All of this, however, has also made any precise philological research today even more difficult, if not impossible.

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