Flying Saucer Attack

Flying Saucer Attack are to be counted among the great revolutionaries who transformed psychedelic rock into an austere form of chamber music. Thanks to groups like this, ambient music came back into fashion, while at the same time acquiring a “rock” identity (at least in performance, which abhors keyboards in favor of guitars).

Flying Saucer Attack are Dave Pearce and Rachel Brook. They came from the same Bristol as Massive Attack and Portishead, but instead of soul and rhythm’n’blues they targeted long avant-garde psychedelic suites/jams, the trance of Eastern music, and the repetition of minimalism.

The early singles, collected on Distance (VHF, 1994), are experimental compositions worthy of Can and Faust. A confused dusting of noise, staged in a manner that is both casual and solemn, makes Instrumental Wish an ideal bridge between cosmic music and free jazz, and the dull vibration of Distance advances with the threatening cadence of horror films and industrial music. Another gruesome staging is achieved with the deafening percussion of Standing Stone (Jan 1993). The effect of these virtuosic studio manipulations of sound is highly evocative, and at times unsettling. Opening and closing the record are the hypnotic moving sound sheets of Oceans (Jun 1993), on the border with new age and Jon Hassell’s world music.
The sung tracks lose some of that fascination. Crystal Shade and Soaring High (Jan 1993) rely mainly on the contrast between violent guitar distortion (the latter also on a driving riff) and the sweetness of their lullabies. November Mist removes the noise and leaves only the lullaby. Overall, Distance nonetheless represents the ideal manifesto for the duo.

The self-titled album (VHF, 1993), also known as Rural Psychedelia, toned down the impact of those singles by adopting a more timid and controlled format, following a practice that dates back to dance music (extended “singles” versus album “songs”). In doing so, the record highlighted its debts to the more violent shoegazers. Tracks such as A Silent Tide are sketches of melodies immediately buried under layers of feedback, as if they were slowly disintegrated by a superhuman force, until they become unintelligible (Make Me Dream). The best pieces also beat out the raga time of the Velvet Underground (My Dreaming Hill, Wish). Jesus And Mary Chain more than My Bloody Valentine, and certainly not Main. Moonset is a small cacophonous piece, Popol Vuh 2 is a grim exercise in rhythm and drones, Popol Vuh 1 is a long (ten-minute) version of the same concept played in slow motion (and related to the cosmic suites of Pink Floyd), and perhaps these ambitious instrumental pieces are the hidden masterpieces of the record. Despite its limits, Rural Psychedelia effectively marked the rebirth of the shoegaze movement updated to new ambient and “concrete” trends.

The singles Soaring High and With from 1993, as well as Crystal Shade and Land Beyond The Sun from 1994, live on cathartic emotions rather than harmonic constructions.

Having abandoned self-contained cacophonies (Rainstorm Blues the last leftover, sinister din in an even more sinister vortex of hisses), and intensified the almost religious intensity of distortion, Further (Drag City, 1995) brings to the surface the enchanted melodies that were buried under layers of noise. The result is an improbable cross between Donovan and Lou Reed in the dreamlike sketches of In The Light Of Time and Come And Close My Eyes.
For Silence extends the process for seven minutes, brushing against transcendental “om.” The guitar is essentially used for two ambient purposes: the faint, pale tapestry of foreground chords (a kind of ineffable paradise) and the dense, dark shroud of background noise (a kind of looming hell). The dialectic between the two determines the track’s dynamics. The voice timidly emerges between them in search of a human dimension that seems impossible, destined to disintegrate continuously against these supernatural forces.
The voice fully crumbles in the apocalyptic distortion of Here Am I, a forceful return of cacophony. The ten minutes of To The Shore do not really fit the album’s theme, but document the duo’s live performance style, which is far more improvised and tense.

In 1996, the somewhat distracted compilation of odds and ends Chorus (Drag City, 1995), which chronologically precedes Further even though it was released a few months later, seems to put an end to the group’s story. The highlight is the single Beach Red Lullaby, with its delicate guitar filigree, and the turbulent vortex of There But Not There. The rest consists of John Peel sessions (as usual rather useless) and material taken from a compilation.

In Search Of Spaces (Hermes, 1996) is a collage of live performances (assembled by the leader of the great Dead C), in which the group displays its improvisational talent. The chords float freely in a territory far more experimental than any of their official tracks.

Pearce re-forms the group without Brook, who has gone on to form Movietone, and with American experimentalist Jim O’Rourke on guitar. After some live performances in the US, Pearce resumes releasing records (essentially alone) under the Flying Saucer Attack name.
Three EPs and mini-CDs mark the official return of F.S.A.: Distant Station (Drag City, 1996), shared with Tele-Funken, Sally Free And Easy (Drag City, 1997), and Goodbye (VHF, 1997), shared with Roy Montgomery. The 53 minutes of the collaboration with Tele-Funken are simply two long remixes of material from the first album. Tele-Funken turns them into two cacophonous free-flowing symphonies. Tele-Funken could just as well have said it was a cover of the national anthem—but that might not have attracted as much attention.
Sally Free And Easy is a 1950s song, but the F.S.A. version has nothing in common with it except the title.
The collaboration with the great Montgomery ends up favoring Pearce over the latter.
Far from having broken up, F.S.A. are trying to exploit their brand to the maximum (including a split single with Jessamine and a full side of a compilation). Their music had never been particularly brilliant, only interesting, and this current prolific output does it no favors.

On the compilation Harmony of the Spheres (Drunken Fish, 1996), Flying Saucer Attack contribute the four-movement suite Since When. The second and fourth movements are both demanding and illuminating compositions. The spiraling drones of the second have a violin-like, luminous tone and pursue a Tibetan-influenced minimalism. The fourth marks out heavy tolling in a threatening wind.

The music of New Lands (Drag City, 1997) resumes from Further, from the idea of delicate elegies pushing through a dark forest of noise. The difference is that the noise has been amplified to obsessive levels, turning melodies into oddities. In fact, this album marked the beginning of a new phase in Flying Saucer Attack’s career.
Up In Her Eyes is perhaps the most song-like song. But the others are cacophonous concerts, walls of distortion no voice could climb, long-winded avant-garde speculations inspired by Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music rather than Brian Eno’s ambient music. The singing is secondary. Indeed, Night Falls and Whole Day Song do not even attempt it: the voice merely whispers over tornadoes of guitars. The Sea (perhaps the best track) suddenly hits like a slap, as the background comes alive and, instead of that monotonous bombardment of frequencies, begins to run with a driving rhythm, becoming the (terrifyingly powerful) rhythm section that accompanies the song.
Forever is the next To The Shore: a long track in slow evolution that explores hidden recesses of the human psyche.
The album suggests a search for new harmonic solutions, but remains almost always halfway between starting point and destination. As a result, it is unclear what kind of music Pearce is aiming for. These tracks, as they are, will probably interest only a few fans. Psychedelia listeners can find far more hypnotic music; intellectuals have countless more experimental records; pop listeners will get nothing out of these unfinished songs. The main problem with Pearce is that even when the idea is interesting, the artist lacks both vocal talent and poetic touch. To give an example, Tim Buckley did similar things (albeit with a completely different sonic backdrop), but he could rely on a cosmic voice and genuine inspiration. Pearce’s music, even when it works, has little to communicate.

Far from being a failed experiment, New Lands contained some of the best music Flying Saucer Attack ever conceived. Unfortunately, with Mirror (Drag City, 2000), rather than trying to perfect that standard, Pearce has decided to stage a tactical regression to acoustic folk (Suncatcher, Tides). Some of the lullabyes are arranged in a bizarre way, with noises and percussions, to coin a dissonant song format that would appeal to Arto Lindsay (Rise, Dust Space). The powerful rhythms that detonated New Lands recur only in the maeltrom of Chemicals, in the "brazilian" techno of Winter Song, and, as background to languid drones, in Darkwind. Pearce should face the fact that he is no Pavarotti and that when he sings too much, he is judged also on the basis of that singing. It's like Saddam asking to be judged on his humanitarian merits.
Perhaps, the most effective track here is Islands, a slow 8-minute dirge on a ringing beat that offers a mellower, but no less gothic, version of Suicide. A similar vein surfaces in the closing nightmare of Star City. Had the whole album followed this creepy inspiration, it would have been the masterpiece that Pearce has never truly delivered. As it is, the album is a confused stack of conflicting ideas.

Clear Horizon (Kranky, 2003) is a collaboration between Jessica Bailiff and David Pearce.