Customer Reviews

Flying Saucer Attack

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

flying saucer attack's self titled(AKA rural psychedelia) release is a hypnotic gem. the theme of the album seems to be the exploration of new realms and soundscapes in music. the cd is consistently perfect throughout its entirety with the strong points being tracks like "my dreaming hill", "wish", and "the drowners". flying saucer attack had combined the dreaminess of my bloody valentine, eroticism of slowdive, and the space rock vibe of subarachnoid space to make a truly wonderful musical masterpiece.

Flying Saucer Attack, with their first release, capture a truly unique blend of melody and sound. Not since the Jesus and Mary Chain released Psyhcocandy, has an album walked the line so well between pop and noise. One of the greatest psychedelic albums of all time, Dave Pierce and friends comb both the depths and the heights of what it means to be alive. If Nick Drake had owned a distortion pedal and effects processor, this might have been the result. One of my top 10 favorite albums. In my opinion a must own...

to describe this record, one must assume that one has fallen asleep while enjoying it. completely relaxing and noisy at the same time, every chance i have to hear it, i end up drifting into a half conscious state, waking up to fininsh it off. luscious waves and noise remind me a bit of the great spacemen 3, with out the rock sensibility, but it works just fine as its own thing.

This is the band's classic 1993 debut CD, often sub-titled as 'Rural Psychedelia'. Along side of their New Zealand import NOW out-of-print 'In Search Of Spaces' title and their 1998 effort 'New Lands', this is pretty much the duo's best work. FSA was made up of two members, Dave Pearce and Rachel Brook. FSA was part experimental, part noise-space rock. A genre that doesn't work for just anyone, but it does well for FSA. My favorite tracks are "My Dreaming Hill", "Popol Vuh 2", the short psych-like piece "Still" and "The Season Is Ours". Much worthy of repeated plays. Should appeal to fans of Bardo Pond, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Roy Mongomery and Cul De Sac. Highly recommended.

On my first listen, I was going "huh?" I was hearing this really cool psychadellic spaced-out alternative indie rock (think Porcupine Tree meets Pink Floyd meets Mogwai). But mysterious noisy static keyboard effects were layered over this music. I was wondering if the keyboard were suppose to have this much feedback. I was asking myself that question until the music grew on me. I didn't care anymore, I realized how briiliant these experimental rockers were. What sounded like a mistake was actually an elaborately structured new expression of rock music. My main beef with this album is the times when the filler tracks play. There are tracks where the band is just playing around with obscure sounds, no real melody, just a wall of noise. As for the vocals, it's kind of buried and soft spoken yet isn't boring. It's not like the singer is just blurting out a bunch of words. He puts effort in making the words flow at ease with the music and it's sort of mellow too. Beautiful haunting voice is what it is. This is an album that manages to be real calm but also crazy, the atmosphere fills with blurry fuzz. They don't call this "Flying Saucer Attack" for nothing because I felt a flying saucer was attacking the music.

i admit, the reason i bought this record originally was so i could be the "cool kid" on the block with the latest trendy "indie" cd. Well... that was almost 6 years ago, and today, it still stacks up as one of my best purchases. I first heard fsa when i was 20 years old. It was my experimental stage and this cd is the perfect soundtrack. It's got the battle scars to prove it. Scratches, tea-stained insert, and coffee mug rings on the case. It looks like it's been through Nam. And to be quite honest, it practically has. This is the diffinitive Dream Pop record of the 90s.

No one who has listened to it should dispute that Flying Saucer Attack's self-titled debut has, without a doubt, the most heavily distorted and feedback-frenzied guitar sound of all of FSA's releases, to the point where if it's listened to at high volume on a pair of earbuds it will make the hairs inside of your ears stand erect and tingle with all of the electricity that seems to crackle from it.

Dave Pearce sub-titled this release "Rural Pscychedelia", but that isn't a sound that FSA would actually perfect until the release of their second full-length CD "Further" (with "November Mist" from their first singles collection (and second release) "Distance" providing a definitive reference point for it, with both its meditatively strummed guitar and the backwash of subdued feedback heard within the confines the song). "Further" brings tuneful feedback to the forefront and unites it with contemplative passages of acoustic guitar work, creating the dynamic tension that to me is the real essence of rural pscychedelia. "FSA" does give us "Popul Vuh 1" but this track, far more subdued than the CD's other cuts, is essentially ambient, pointing the way for the inclusion on each of their subsequent releases during Phase One at least one song that matches its nature as an experimental, percussive, ambient-themed soundscape.

But this isn't to say that "FSA" pales drastically in comparison to the rest of his catalog, though it is the CD I listen to the least from Phase One of Pearce's career as a recording artist; even through the heavy fuzz of distortion and feedback identifiable melodies emerge, and though oftentimes aggressive, the riffing hints at the expaniveness toward which Pearce's guitar tone would later shift. For any one who enjoys Flying Saucer Attack's music this is definitely a neccessary release (though not a definitive one), and should you have the opportunity, grab it.

This is where they began, where FSA took off to ride the cosmic wind to some better place. The sound here is distant, other-worldly yet still tethered to Earth by some force of gravity that cohesively holds these songs together. While "My Dreaming Hill," "Make me Dream," "Wish" and "The Drowners" seem intent on taking the torch from My Bloody Valentine in terms of guitar effects, they are anchored by industrial-sounding beats. FSA also move forward from the MBV territory by including excursions into free-jazz on "Moonset" and pure ambient experimentation on "Still." This album is a great listen suited for galactic dreams while you have the headphones on.

You are in your car late at night, trying to stay awake as you drive along a lonely highway. You reach to the dash, turn on the radio and start turning the AM dial. Nothing much but static... but then you find something.

What in hell is this? It may be one of the best songs you have ever heard, but you can't quite catch it as it teases your mind; it's just beyond your reach. As the distant station fades in and out until it is gone, you desperately want to know what that song was, and you wonder if you will ever hear it again. But even if you never find out, this moment of wonderment sticks with you forever.

This is the sound of Flying Saucer Attack's "rural psychedelia". Distant, almost (but not quite) lost, pulsing, throbbing, vibrating, with snitches and snatches of melody and voice fading in and out of a fuzzy musical consciousness.

It's the sound of late nights, of long dark drives, of sunsets and of twilight. It's a sound from the heart of the night sky, beaming in from an unknown place, just for you. To discover the place from which the music comes, lend your ears. "My Dreaming Hill" may be a place you find yourself visiting from time to time!

Years ago I used to put this CD in my Discman, put the Discman into my inner coat pocket, and walk to work listening to the album just as dawn broke, often in sub-zero temperatures and through blowing snow. That's an awfully sappy set-up to an album review, I admit, but I think it gives an adequate impression of what this album sounds like: familiar scenes viewed through a blur of motion and half-light, otherworldly but familiar at once. If you like your space rock clean and well-produced (e.g. Mogwai, Sigur Ros) then you probably won't like this album at first; FSA are more old-school, much more like Spacemen 3 and the Jesus and Mary Chain. But once you get used to listening "through" all the distortion and static, you hear the melodies underneath, along with Pearce's strangely lethargic vocals, and it all makes sense. This is what psychedelia always should have been but very seldom was: disconnected but beautiful and evocative even though it hurts for the first few seconds you hear it. If you haven't heard FSA you should start either with this album, "Chorus", or "Distance". Among their finest.