Customer Reviews

Further

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

 

 

FSA's first self-titled album was an amalgam of My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3, Velvet Underground, and a little bit of Suicide. Put bluntly: it was loaded with distortion/reverb, and it was as loud as the runway at an airport. For Further, Dave Pearce has put some breathing room in his songs. Instead of dousing everything in reverb, he uses acoustic guitars on almost every song, giving the album an organic feel. "In the Light of Time" starts off innocently enough, but slowly the noise starts to push through the cracks and by the end dominates the song, and it's gorgeous. Many of the songs fit this bill, but it doesn't sound formulaic. I don't know for certain, but it sounds like Dave Pearce may have spent some time with his Brian Eno albums, because there is a definite organic ambience that is very soothing. Further is very easy to listten to, but demands patience. If you give it a chance, it will graft itself to your brain and take up residence there.

This is clearly a departure from the typical FSA sound, with lots of acoustic guitars and more slow songs. The sound of rain is constantly to be heard in the background, and it sets the mood perfectly. As mentioned, the songs are mainly built around an acoustic guitar and the silent singing typical for FSA. But behind the beautiful songs are several layers of distortion that grows in an almost organic way, constantly threatening to break through the calm, creating an overwhelming wall of noise - there's a lot of tension in the music. All in all, this is one of the best albums ever recorded, mainly because of the combination between beauty and chaos. A must buy, especially if you like FSA's other releases!

It's hard for me not to engage in hyperbole when talking about Flying Saucer Attack. Each of their albums reaches a very deep place that no other music, including classical, comes close to. This is David Pearce's most beautiful album, so beautiful that it's very difficult for me to listen to. As someone once said "The problem with beauty isn't finding it, it's bearing it." Other reviews of this album stress it's greater reliance on acoustic instruments and more conventional melodies than their first album. Maybe so, but the conventional melodies are unspeakably beautiful and like nothing I've ever heard before, and they tend to be nestled in as awesome a bed of ecstatic, shimmering noise as anything in fsa's catalog. "She is the Daylight" ends the album, after the three more intense pieces that proceed it, on a note of wistful tenderness that might remind you of what it really felt like when you first fell in love. Somebody, please play this at my funeral.

Mixing both heavily distorted and rustically acoustic guitar passages on a number of "Further's" tracks, Dave Pearce arrived at the quintessential Flying Saucer Attack sound on his second full-length release. Nowhere is this more apparent than on tracks three and four, "Come and Close My Eyes" and "For Silence", where this blend unites feedback sounding like the gentle roar of the of the white noise channeled throughout the universe and the wistful, contemplative, fluid progression of plaintively struck notes on an unamplified guitar and creates the true essence of rural psychedelia that Pearce was attempting to isolate on FSA's first self-titled release. It's both vast and intimate at once, with a timeless, meditative, organic flow to it. Although his vocal range is limited, the warmth of Pearce's voice and simple cadence of his delivery serves to complement the expansive feeling almost every song achieves.

I generally recommend "Further" as an entry point into Flying Saucer Attack, as it's probably the most perfect distillation of the band's sound. If you like what you hear on this release, pick up their singles collections "Distance" and "Chorus" afterward. Both manage to each have their own cohesive sound, despite containing material not originally linked together in date or in order of composition. I can't add anything more to this review than what others commenting on "Further" have already said; it's an essential, must-own CD for anyone who appreciates deeply introspective, well-crafted, guitar-driven atmospheric music.

"Thanks to all escpecially those who understand." The most existentialistic, surreal record that I own. Acoustic contrasted to apocalytic electric "sheets of sound" similar to what Coltrane was trying to do (?) only in the language of pure electric instrumentation. In my opinion David Pearce is one of the greatest electric guitarists of all time, that we will ever hear. Incomparable style, more organic than My Bloody Valentine, more sensible than Medicine, more chaotic that The Verve. My singular inspiration, forget the rest of rock 'n roll. Organic contrasted to electric, night contrasted to the pure light of day. I am still scarred to listen to the first track when I am alone in the room. This record is oddly spiritual, erriely existential. The very finest "noisepop" electric guitar that we will ever hear? How does he make those sheets of unadulterated pure noiseful melodies? Some things are better left a mystery, left unsaid. This is the best rock 'n roll record that I own.

Flying Saucer Attack - Further (1995)

Some people might think Flying Saucer Attack sounds like a campy joke name for a band. But put on FURTHER, turn off the lights, and the joke isn't funny anymore. The first track sounds like an actual alien invasion with unsettling guitars that wail like sirens while thunder and other disturbing noises add to the effect.

FSA have created some of the finest guitar atmospherics ever recorded and FURTHER is their best, most consistent album. The walls of sound full of endless echo and otherworldly guitar textures are truly mind-blowing. But the album also features lovely acoustic guitars and gentle vocals which provide intriguing contrasts as well as the underlying heart of most of these tracks.

Some may find the guitars to be overwhelming and the songs to be not so melodic, but if you have a taste for this sort of thing they're absolutely astounding, mysterious and beautiful. It's true that the ominous opening cut is more or less strictly atmospheric as is the 12 minute "to the shore" which features shimmering cymbals, treated tables and other effects which serve to compliment those intensely trippy guitar sounds. Clearly, the emphasis here is on atmosphere, and it compares favorably to anything heard in the dream pop, space rock or shoegazing realms. Highly recommended.

The beautiful lilting melodies, just beyond the wall of distortion makes Flying Saucer Attack the best ambient noise band since Spacemen 3. I think the music is sensual and strangely lyrical for a band whose words are impossible to understand. In my opinion this is a great CD to cook to, clean the house to and have sex to.

2 1/2

This is probably the best disc the swirling, effects-heavy group has released, but that does not say much since I really find the group overrated. Production is always a chore, rarely complimenting sonic architecture the greatest moments strive towards, and instead highlighting what weak melodies and techniques are really going on. You just cannot escape a cloying garage-level experimentation with these guys. The key has always been drowning that stuff out with enough noise that somehow it becomes meditative, a hard to find compromise FSA rarely strike in my opinion. One wonders how much better off they would have been completely abandoning any delusions of traditional vocal based rock and concentrated on ambiance alone.