ETHER OR

This second album from SUBARACHNOID SPACE is definitely ambient, mysterious and experimental. "Ether Or" features mostly long improvised pieces of growing, deep and dark psychedelic music. Often dissonant and tortured, but always inspired.

The record opens with the terrifying introduction of "Circular Motion". Textures of sounds make you travel into a lost far away black hole. Then drums and reverb guitars appears, adding a little indian touch to the song. "Whispers of Momentum" is the most spacey moment of the disc, with its mystical riff and its elongated guitar improvisations, sometimes reminiscent of PINK FLOYD's "Careful with That Axe, Eugene". The next track, "Flicker", is the oddest here and has a pleasant early gothic feel. Darkness and mystery come back with "Shady Character", the most agressive and iciest tune of the album.

In opposite, "Repetitive Smile" is rather calm and very relaxing. The listener is in the sky while listening. After arrives the longest track, "A Collection of Smoke". The first part makes me think of DEAD CAN DANCE's early acts and is one of the best passages of the record with its energic drumming and yelling guitars, as if a giant beast was trying to escape from its cage. The second part is much more calm, preparing to sonic explosions and collisions in the final part. Mindblowing! The disc concludes with "Don't Look in the Mirror", an average short experimental ambient track.

"Ether Or" alternates long evolving pieces and shorter tunes, tortured passages, energic playing and calmer moments. A good release from SUBARACHNOID SPACE. If you are into psychedelia or dark music, this disc is for you!

"Ether Or" is the 2nd full-length studio album by US Psychadelic/Space rock act Subarachnoid Space. The album was released through Unit Circle Rekkids in April 1997. Subarachnoid Space were founded in 1996 and were originally based in San Francisco, California. The debut album "Delicate Membrane" was released in September 1996, which means that there are only 8 months between the debut and "Ether Or".

"Ether Or" features 7 tracks and a total playing time of 54:36 minutes. Three of the tracks on the album exceed the 10 minute mark. All tracks are more or less intrumental psychadelic/Space rock jams. Think Hawkwind (without the sax and the keyboards) when they are most out there and noisy. The instrumentation is very basic with bass, 2 guitars and drums. There´s an almost rehearsal room like quality to the recordings where especially the sound on the drums lead my thoughts in that direction. I also hear a slight post rock vibe on the album. The music on the album are generally not easily accessible featuring lots of dissonance and unstructured playing. To my ears the music is in dire need of memorable hooks or anything catchy that I can hold on to or remember. Much of the time the jamming sounds directionless and quite frankly pointless.

The fact that the rehearsal room sounding production is amaturish, murky and noisy doesn´t exactly help on my impression of the album either. Listeners who adore jams that go on and on without reference points, played by sloppy musicians and packed in a amaturish sound production might enjoy this, but personally I find it a trial to get through and a 1.5 star (25%) rating is warranted.

I really didn't think i'd be giving out a 1 star rating as I try to be careful and research well before I buy. I had already purchased this cd when I saw UMUR's 1 star review, so I decided to start with SUBARACHNOID SPACE's latest "Red Veil" which I had purchased at the same time. That album is fantastic so I went into this one fairly optimistic thinking maybe UMUR just isn't into this style of Psychedelic music. Well UMUR is right on several fronts. First of all the sound quality is poor, in fact it sounds like it was recorded in a garage. And yes it sounds amateurist as well. I do know this is all improvized which lets face it doesn't always work. In this case none of it works. I don't know if i've ever been so agitated listening to an album before. A combination of the poor sound, noisy jamming and boring repetitive sounds.

The good news is that they have improved since this album in just about every way possible.