Spacemen 3 - Disc of the day

Spacemen 3
Playing With Fire

(Fire, 1989)

“Taking drugs to make music to take drugs to” was their motto. And this was their apotheosis.

Closer to the ambience of Brian Eno or Neu! than the psych-rock of 1987’s The Perfect Prescription, Spacemen 3’s third album is a veritable cornucopia of aural delights. Refining their “minimalism as maximalism” sonic manifesto, Peter Kember and Jason Pierce build up songs from simple drone-like motifs into swirling, hypnotic swathes of otherworldly sound. At times beautifully fragile - the broken, almost childlike prayer of So Hot could easily have been birthed in Brian Wilson’s acid-fried sandpit circa 1967 – yet also capable of producing nauseating levels of white noise – see Suicide’s 11-minute exploration in feedback – Playing With Fire is never anything less than mesmerising. Shimmering church organs blend with cascading guitars, synths shudder and pulsate like passing alien motherships, while the part-sung/part-whispered vocal are strung-out mantras, repeating a triune preoccupation with God, love and drugs. Lots of drugs.

Although marking the end of the band as a functioning unit (1991’s Recurring was a glued-together affair, where the estranged pair worked separately), Playing With Fire would provide rich fertilizer for a posthumous slew of shoe-gazers, post-rockers and ambient electro-nerds, and a working template for most of the records Pierce went on to make with Spiritualized. Nevertheless, two decades on it still sounds as fresh, exhilarating and downright out there as anything that’s followed in its frazzled wake. To the moon, Alice!

Chris Catchpole

Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 6:00 AM GMT 15/07/2008

Further Listening

Spacemen 3 – The Perfect Prescription (Glass, 1987)

Neu! – Neu! 75 (Brain, 1975)

Various Artists – Spacelines: Sonic Sounds For Subterraneans (Munster, 2004)

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