Live music this week from Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember, and his band Spectrum. Kember’s work in the 1980’s with British band Spacemen 3 would take post-punk music into heady and psychedelic territority with it’s “minimal is maximal” aesthetic, and “just say yes” injunction of, “taking drugs to make music to take drugs to”. This set was recorded live at The Chop Suey in Seattle, and features the Spectrum song “Undo the Taboo”, as well as “Revolution”, originally a Spacemen 3 tune. Stream the links below or check it out on our podcast series…iTunes, Podcast.com, and Podcast Alley. CONTINUE READING
STREAMING MEDIA LINKS:
VIDEO: Spectrum “Undo the Taboo” Space Age Recordings [YOUTUBE]
BUY MP3: Amazon
VIDEO: Spectrum “Revolution” [YOUTUBE]
BUY CD: Amazon
BUY VINYL: INSOUND
In 1990, with the demise of British band Spacemen 3 growing increasingly imminent, one of it’s founding members, Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember, would release his first solo album, Spectrum, and with it’s cover of Suicide’s “Rock N’ Roll Is Killing My Life” Kember would continue to forge the hypnotic throb and drone that was becoming a trademark of his sound. Having founded Spacemen 3 in 1982 with fellow art student and friend Jason Pierce, the band would go on to push post-punk music into psychedelic and avant-garde territory with their open celebration of chemically altered states of consciousness and the notion that sound and music could fuel such endeavors. However, by 1990 the bands best days were behind them, having played their final live show at the Reading Festival the year before (and having failed to acquire visas to tour the States due to previous drug convictions) the bands existence spiraled out of control as evidenced by their final release, 1991’s Recurring, on which Kember and Pierce each recorded a side for the album in different studios. The album would go on to be their most commercially successful, but the tensions between Kember and Pierce would prove too much to overcome, and by 1991 Kember was performing as the band Spectrum, while Jason Pierce and fellow Spacemen 3 bandmates Will Carruthers and Jonny Mattock had formed the band Spiritualized. In just five short years and across a handful of releases, the band’s “minimal is maximal” aesthetic, as well as their “just say yes” motto of “taking drugs to make music to take drugs to” had infected another generation of musicians and artists. The bands use of drone to create their music’s hypnotic throb, their penchant for scorching “wall of sound” audio chaos, as well as their “anti-show” performances, with band members seated and seemingly performing in trance-e-delic states, would go on to lay the groundwork for genres like shoegaze and much of post rock in general.
The demise of Spacemen 3 left Pete Kember free to explore the outer limits of his musical interests, and by 1990 he had initiated two side projects, Experimental Audio Research, an improvisational and free-form unit, as well as Spectrum, the band he had started with guitarist Richard Formby and bassist Mike Stout to persue his more “high-profile and straightforward” interests. In many ways Spectrum would be an extension of his work with Spacemen 3, a music that revolved around extreme dynamics, at times ethereal and sublime, but often blowing open the doors of perception with reverb and feedback. In addition, though, Kember’s exploration of ambient territory in Experimental Audio Research would also seep into his work with Spectrum, and an album like 1994’s Highs, Lows, and Heavenly Blows or 1997’s Forever Alien was like finding an old hit of acid in the back of your freezer. (Hmmm, wonder if it’s still good?) While most heads were moving onto the more feel good territory of ecstasy and the rave, and Kember’s former trip partner Jason Pierce was coming down to earth and making heroin sheik gorgeous and orchestral, Sonic Boom was heavily dosed and still transmitting haunting and alien vibrations.
Throughout the 90’s and into the 21st century Kember has continued to split time between his two projects, all the while collaborating with an eclectic collection of musicians. In 1996 Spectrum teamed up with Seattle space rockers Jessamine for the joint release A Pox on You, and in 1999 the band was joined by the legendary Silver Apples on the EP A Lake Of Teardrops. In addition, E.A.R. has always provided Kember the opportunity to experiment with like-minded sound travelers such as Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine, Eddie Prevost of AMM, as well as Lawrence Chandler of Bowery Electric, or the late Delia Derbyshire (electronic composer, as well as co-creator of the Doctor Who theme song). To his musical credits Kember has also added production and engineering, having opened New Atlantis studio in his hometown of Rugby, England, and in recent months he has had his hands on a number of exciting releases including mixing Panda Bear’s Tomboy LP, as well as remixes of work by Moon Duo, The 13th Floor Elevators and Red Crayola! And, as if that is not enough, it looks like we can look forward to a new Spectrum album coming out later this year on Mind Expansion in the US and Space Age Recordings in the UK. Preliminary word via their Myspace says, “The album is a mix between Highs, Lows, and Heavenly Blows and Spacemen 3’s The Perfect Prescription…” Get ready to put on your inter-galactic goggles and come down slowly!!
