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Spacemen 3 - Sound of Confusion CD (album) cover

SOUND OF CONFUSION

Spacemen 3

 

Psychedelic/Space Rock

2.54 | 9 ratings

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siLLy puPPy
Special Collaborator
PSIKE, JRF/Canterbury, P Metal, Eclectic
2 stars SPACEMEN 3 got their start as far back as 1982 in Rugby, England by Peter Kember aka Sonic Boom and Jason Pierce better known as J. Spaceman. These guys were the only members to stay with the band for the entire eight year run but soon encountered kindred spirits in creating a style of psychedelic garage rock that was inspired by heavy drug use and longed for the missed opportunities of the 1960s psychedelic drug culture.

After a few years of playing live gigs, SPACEMEN 3 found interest in a select concert in Coventry which led to a demo tape and then this first album SOUND OF CONFUSION which appeared in 1986. In addition to Sonic Boom (guitar, feedback) and J. Spaceman (guitar, vocals), this first album also featured Pete Bain on bass and Nicholas Brooker on drums and percussion. The original album came out on the Glass label only on vinyl but found a second issue in 1989 on Fire and yet another release with bonus tracks in 1994 on Taang!

This debut is roughly half originals and half covers of songs by artists like13th Floor Elevators and The Stooges who were the band's primary influences. The band became well known even at this early stage for its self-penned brand of "minimalistic psychedelia" and the members promoted heavy drug use which the hypnotic and minimalistic music perfectly represented. The members not only promoted cannabis use but LSD, magic mushrooms, MDMA, amphetamines, cocaine and were admitted heroin addicts which explains the lackadaisical almost robotic performances on SOUND OF CONFUSION.

Having been the starting point for the later band Spiritualized which J Spaceman would find greater success, SPACEMAN 3 pretty much started out as a fairly generic garage rock band inspired by Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground as far as the mopey presentations are concerned along with a rough proto-punk guitar sound of early Stooges. The 13th Floor Elevator influences come in from the psychedelic droning and swirling synth sounds that accompany the minimalistic two and three chord patterns that indeed do become monotonous and well, rather dull actually.

While the band would venture out into more diverse soundscapes, SOUND OF CONFUSION is truly an album that was meant to be really fucked up on drugs as it is about as monotonous and uninspiring of an album as i've ever heard. Admittedly not my musical bailiwick, i do appreciate beautifully crafted psychedelic rock and even angsty clever garage rock that has some melodic heft under its wings however SOUND OF CREATION doesn't really excel in either. While perfect for zoning out on ketamine or your drug of choice, this album doesn't really offer much to the active listener with an incessant plodding of extremely minimalistic guitar fuzz, a lazy percussive beat and mopey almost comatose vocals.

The following album "The Perfect Prescription" would add more musical elements and at least allow some variations to accompany the minimalistic guitar chords but on this one it's all above the ultimate zoning out and for my tastes a complete waste of time as the album literally sounds like the same track recorded over and over with nothing more than a few chord changes and literally the type of music anybody could record in like 10 minutes as there is no actual compositional approach attempted. While that may not be the point, the album just doesn't work from a psychedelic standpoint either as the Stooges attempt distracts from the shoegazey droning and the trippy background while sounding decent enough doesn't really deviate from the one-trick pony stylistic approach. Not my thing!

siLLy puPPy | 2/5 |

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