FLYING SAUCER ATTACK

I picked this album up from a used-record store in the Mojave Desert several years ago. It long ago became scratched and unplayable, but back then I was committing all my albums to tape so I could listen to them in my car, so I still have that. As I recall my copy of the album was a bit different – it was a blue vinyl record with a plain white label. Maybe it was a demo version, and I’m not sure how it ended up all the way in the desert in southern California (this is a British act on an indy label), but it struck me as interesting at the time.

The first disclaimer about this album is that the production quality is absolutely horrible. Now granted, the musical style is experimental/post-rock, and this band seems to center all of their work around sonic feedback anyway, so some of this is to be expected. But even with that considered, the quality is very poor. This was almost certainly recorded on four tracks, so with one for overdubbing drums plus the vocals (which are pretty much unintelligable), that doesn’t leave much room for separation of sound, and the left speaker of my stereo pretty much sounds like it’s blown whenever I play this record (which isn’t very often). It reminds me very much of so many of the other independent label thrash/grunge/punk band recordings that were so prevalent in the mid-90s, and has the same lack of recognizable timing, tempo, or conscious arrangement.

There’s not much to say about the album beyond that. The song structures are fairly simple, and mostly all the same: intro, short monotone vocal verse, sonic feedback. That’s about it. A couple songs like “Popol Vuh 2” have extended drum-track/whining keyboard stretches that I suppose are meant to set some sort of eerie or introspective mood, but it’s very hard to get past the poor quality of the recording, and I invariably shut it off before getting through the whole album in one setting. In fact, I don’t believe I’ve ever managed to get all the way through it without at least one break.

There aren’t any credits to speak off on the album liner, but I looked the band up and apparently this is pretty much a man (David Pearce) and his 4-track soundboard. There was a girl who played bass some (Rachel Brook), but apparently that relationship didn’t work out and she wasn’t around long. I can’t find too much evidence of any kind of regular touring schedule or even a reliable web site, and considering it’s been more than half a decade since the last recording, I think it’s safe to sat these guys aren’t around anymore.

So unless you are really into poorly produced guitar and keyboard feedback channeled through four tracks, I would avoid these guys, or at least this album.

One star.

peace

It's more shoegaze than post, and needs to tunnel through walls of sound to get to the really interesting and best tracks, but perfection is perfection. The best way to describe the album is almost track-by-track: the first four plunge into a dense mire of wailing, fuzzy shoegaze guitars, with the post guitar sounding off in the background as our vocalist sings softly and beautifully from what seems the middle of the wall. It almost seems as if it's going to be a 3.5 star album of nothing but this bliss, but then "Wish" comes along and they expand their sound. The walls only return for "The Drowners" and "Still", leaving track five and "The Season Is Ours" to find prettiness in minimalism much like Talk Talk, the latter also using the shoegaze style for a guitar that doesn't overpower. And then there's the two tracks named for Popol Vuh, sprawling, atmospheric cuts very much inspired by them, pulling out keys for a third kind of beauty. What pulls it all together is how the tracks are sequenced, making the progression from each feel natural. A diverse and particularly modern kind of psychedelic goodness, simply stellar.