Spacemen 3 Albums (8)
'Live in Europe 1989'
Release Date 6/13/2000
Tracks 13
Label Space Age Recordings
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What The Critics Say
Recorded over four nights in Germany during what turned out to be Spacemen 3's final tour, Live in Europe 1989 is far better than the more ragged earlier Spacemen 3 live album, 1988's Performance. The album's also notable for documenting the group's short-lived quartet lineup, with bassist Willie Carruthers and drummer Jon Mattock. Despite the change in rhythm sections, the focus is, as always, on guitarists Pete Kember and Jason Pierce, who by this point in the group's career aren't even pretending to be interesting in standard verse-chorus-verse structure. Rather surprisingly, only one of the 13 tracks -- a 16-minute take on Playing With Fire's centerpiece track, "Suicide" -- breaks the ten-minute barrier that was so often smashed through on the group's studio recordings, but there's still an epic, expansive feel to these loose, perfectly ragged performances. Although newcomers are advised to start with Playing With Fire or Recurring, Live in Europe 1989 is essential for fans. A shortened version of this was released on Bomp Records in 1995 under the title Spacemen Are Go! The missing tracks are a murmuring version of the single "Take Me to the Other Side" and an inconsequential seven-minute alternate take of "Suicide." ~ Stewart Mason, All Music Guide
'Performance: Live at the Melkweg 6/2/88'
Release Date 9/1/1995
Tracks 10
Label Taang
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What The Critics Say
Taang! Records inexplicably released this 1988 recording in order to fill out long-gone Spacemen 3's respectable backlog of performance albums and European bootlegs. While it is hard to avoid the terms "psychedelic" and "minimalist" in regard to this durable but ultimately vaporous-by-design band, fans will enjoy the hardcore jazz impulses that legitimized but probably limited the three (who were actually four). A number of these songs of course appear on other records, uncomfortably (but aptly) titled Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To and For All the Fucked-Up Children of this World, We Give You Spacemen 3, and others (debut Sound of Confusion and Perfect Prescription) before the defection of their competent drummers Pete Baines and Rosco. Overamped jamming on a single chord or simple progression renders most songs indistinguishable from one another, meandering along obscure streams-of-consciousness considered sublime listening to some, just plain strange to others. "Suicide" and "Take Me To the Other Side" are probably the furthest-flung acid-trip soundtracks, although "Walking with Jesus" represents the genre to which guitarist/vocalist Jason Pierce will ultimately become devoted in his later group, Spiritualized. In the meantime Sonic Boom (Peter Kember helps us out on "Rollercoaster," for those who find queasiness delicious. Can't dance to it (or "on" it), but safer than its pharmaceutical counterpart. ~ Becky Byrkit, All Music Guide
'Dreamweapon: An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music'
Release Date 1/1/1990
Tracks 4
Label Fierce
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What The Critics Say
Taking off from the ideals which form the core of La Monte Young's concept of "dream music," the heart of Dreamweapon is "An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music," a transfixing 40-plus-minute document of a landmark Spacemen 3 performance recorded at Waterman's Art Centre in Hammersmith on August 19, 1988. Perhaps the purest expression of the Spacemen aesthetic, the piece is an unbroken tapestry of hypnotic drones, throbbing tones, and repetitive phrases, dappled here and there by evaporating fragments of the melodies which later resurfaced on Playing With Fire. The cumulative effect is one of utter disorientation -- all notions of time and space quickly give way to complete conscious immersion in the music's narcotic tug. A pair of epic rarities, Sonic Boom's feedback sculpture "Ecstasy in Slow Motion" and "Spacemen Jam," round out the package. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Appropriately preceded by the mind-melting crunch of the "Revolution" single, Playing with Fire proved to be the end of Spacemen 3 as a functioning band, but in truly spectacular fashion. Exploring both the depths of serene, agog beauty and sheer tape-shredding chaos, Playing with Fire pushed the extremes of The Perfect Prescription to an even further edge. It's little surprise that Pierce and Sonic couldn't find themselves properly working together after it, but even less that hordes of bands to follow would rank Playing with Fire as the equal (or better) of psychedelia's '60s/'70s forebears. Sonic himself is quoted in one reissue's liner notes as feeling the album "was the refining point of a lot of my theories on minimalism being maximalism" -- as apt a description as any. One of his songs, "How Does It Feel?," sums it up by using a series of notes echoing off into the distance, again and again. With future Spiritualized bassist Will Carruthers in place of Bain, the trio (and uncredited drummer) created glazed, liquid songs with subtle arrangements and sheer reveling in aural joys. Flange is everywhere, as is echo, full dynamic stereo mixes and more, a feast of sound. When aiming toward a gentler, hushed sound, most notably on Pierce's compositions, the incorporation of gospel power filtered through the band's own perspective results in wonders, as heard on "Come Down Softly to My Soul" and the album closing "Lord Can You Hear Me?" As for the louder end of things, besides the awesome "Revolution" itself, a slow burn blast that just keeps getting more and more obsessive and frenetic as it goes, Sonic calling for a release of energy in a mere five seconds, the other complete freakout is "Suicide." An instrumental tribute to the New York synth pioneers, Spacemen 3 keep the minimalism and up the feedback with astonishing results. Initial repressings of the album in the mid-'90s included tracks from the Revolution and Threebie singles, while an elaborate reissue in 1999 also including a full extra disc of demos and rarities, including covers of the Perfect Disaster's "Girl on Fire" and the Troggs' "Anyway That You Want Me" -- eventually Spiritualized's first single. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
'The Perfect Prescription'
Release Date 1/1/1987
Tracks 10
Label Fire
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What The Critics Say
Drawing together some earlier material and a slew of new songs, Spacemen 3 tied everything together on the brilliant Perfect Prescription, the clear point of departure from tribute to psych inspirations and finding its own unique voice. Planned as a concept album, Perfect Prescription works where so many other similar efforts failed due to the strength of the individual songs, as well as the smart focus of the concept in question -- a vision of a drug trip from inception to its blasted conclusion, highs and lows fully intact. The bookending of the album makes that much clear -- "Take Me to the Other Side" is a brash, exultant charge into the joys of the experience, a sharp, tight performance. "Call the Doctor," meanwhile, is a pretty-but-wounded conclusion, husky singing and a drowsy mood detailing the final collapse. The many highlights in between beginning and end are so striking that the album is practically a best-of in all but name. Sonic's eventual work with Spectrum and E.A.R. gets clearly signaled via the majestic reprise of the Transparent Radiation single, here introduced by the swirling flange of an edited "Ecstasy Symphony," also originally from that release. Sonic's breathless delivery of the Red Krayola classic, combined with the elegant arrangement, is a marvel to hear. "Walkin' With Jesus," meanwhile, is practically the birth of Spiritualized, the much different earlier takes now become a reflective combination of acoustic guitar, two-note keyboard lines, and Pierce's yearning, aching desire. The intentionally nasty flip to that is the storming charge of "Things'll Never Be the Same," a call to arms (or injecting something into them) that's as disturbing as it is energetic, the compressed, violent rage of feedback and rhythmic charge a gripping listen. Guest performers from the Jazz Butcher family tree, including Alex Green on sax, help expand the record's sonic range even further. Further reissues include a rotating series of bonus tracks from contemporary singles. ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
What The Critics Say
Sonic Boom's liner notes from the 1994 reissue in many ways capture the whole point of Spacemen 3's full-length debut: "[It] was basically an exorcism for us of our early material...we began our discography with an equal nod to our influences and our inspirations." Indeed, calling Sound of Confusion derivative misses the point entirely, where calling it anything but a clear and specific homage to a sound and style would be a complete mistake. Three of its seven songs are cover versions -- "Rollercoaster" by the 13th Floor Elevators, "Mary Anne" by Juicy Lucy, and the Stooges' "Little Doll" -- while the originals are at once very much Spacemen 3 songs and clear distillations of everything the band members were tripping out on at the time. Though Sonic and Pierce later expressed a preference for the takes included on the Taking Drugs to Make Music bootleg, the rough garage energy throughout still makes Sound of Confusion a fine listen, if nowhere near as stunning as where the band would later go. As was the case throughout the band's early days, Pierce handled all the vocals with the right amount of diffidence and low-key intensity, while he and Sonic cranked up the amps for minimal, bluntly entrancing riffs and the Brooker/Bain rhythm section chugged along. Of the originals, leadoff cut "Losing Touch With My Mind" is the strongest of the bunch, a perfect fusion of the psych/proto-punk/drone influences of its creators sent into the outer void. Meanwhile, "Hey Man," the title audibly playing off the rhythm and sound of the word "amen," is the first of many overt references to gospel music that Pierce would incorporate for years to come. Some later CD versions included the Walking With Jesus EP for bonus tracks, along with one of the many demo takes on "2:35." ~ Ned Raggett, All Music Guide
