[nomowish]

[listening to: an unseen person to the far-right of my house mowing his/her lawn]

http://www.3ammagazine.com/musicarch...onic_boom.html

3AM: When you got Spacemen 3 together during your late teens in sleepy old Rugby, what bands had inspired you to form a group?

Sonic Boom: Well, I wouldn't just say bands. I was influenced by films and "ambient", or day to day, sound. Hence, my pseudonym "Sonic Boom". I always was very impressed by droning washing machines, heard through the floor on those sick days in bed off school, and more so by the symphony of summer mowers in suburbia, accompanied by various planes (I like the big WW2 bombers). That sounds as much as it feels. Also, I got dragged along to motor-racing events from as early as I can remember and the feel, sound and smell of some 16 valve or V8 pumping out power is quite impressive. A symphony of 16 valves -- there's a concept for you...

I was always particularly fond of simple music, ideally featuring a drone, or common note throughout the music (e.g. The Kinks' 'See My Friends', Rolf Harris's 'Sun-Arise', the Who's 'I Can See For Miles', Roxy Music's 'Sultanesque', lots of Velvets stuff, Stooges stuff, MC5, Suicide). Basically, one chord best, two chords cool, three chords ok, four chords average. Much of my sound (as opposed to conceptual and songwriting involvement) in Spacemen 3 was textural. Simple drone chords of texture, slow crescendo and dynamic -- being able to take one chord from the proverbial whisper to a scream.

One of the other big influences was of course, consciousness exploration and change and the experimentation with sound under altered states of consciousness -- but also to bring back the "language" to be able to re-transmit those states through sound and music. Actually I very much believe the Cage-ism of any sound having the possibility to be musical. Almost any sound can be made to enthrall, astound, bore, outrage through simple temporal elongations, pitch transposing and numerous other sound processing possibilities.

How our music sounded straight and under the influence of various drugs was absolutely fundamental to me, and was a prominent aspect of the band. Also, how things like natural sound mixing and phasing was "hearable" under psychedelics like acid and mushrooms was a revelation. Cars swishing along the road in the rain was suddenly (and to me is still) a very emotive sound. Whereby, I mean I think it strikes strong feelings from within. This has always been my main aim. To make music that strikes and evokes/captures strong feelings/emotions. To that end, I think a composer is literally an antenna to take in feelings, emotions etc and analyse, resynthesise and then broadcast out to other humans. We felt we were making music (in the mid 80's) for a sector of society including ourselves who seemed uncatered for. We could only imagine that there were other people out there wanting something more than what was currently on offer and in the realm which interested us. Luckily, we slowly seemed to find the other alienated types seeking something special from the music in their lives -- i.e. not aural wallpaper as music is sometimes used.

3AM: I like what you said about ordinary day-to-day noises. Have you read David Toop's Ocean of Sound? It has an interesting quote about how some of us are all looking for that switch in our brain that can be triggered by hearing the "right" sound that does it for us individually.

SB: No. I would hope it's every artist's aim to relate to the human condition and communicate. I don't think it's a switch. I think they're sliders. You can take them to different levels via different augments i.e. psyche music being able to partially re-feel the experience, but with the right setting and set, or even the right drugs, different levels of "switching" can be perceived and achieved -- I think it's continuous not discrete. Ultimately, we as part of the organic universe are principally analogue devices. I think analogue methods might be best further explored in parallel to digital methods.

[nomowish]

 

 

Here is the first paragraph of David Toop's Ocean of Sound:

Sitting quietly in never-never land, I am listening to summer fleas jump off my small female cat on to the polished wood floor. Outside, starlings are squabbling in the fig tree and from behind me I can hear swifts wheeling over rooftops. An ambulance siren, full panic mode, passes from behind the left centre of my head to starboard front. Next door, the neighbours are screaming - "... fuck you... I didn't... get out that door..." - but I tune that out. The ambient hum of night air and low frequency motor vehicle drone merges with insect hum called back from the 1970s, a country garden somewhere, high summer in the afternoon. The snow has settled. I can smell woodsmoke. Looking for fires I open the front door, peer out into the shining dark and hear stillness. Not country stillness but urban shutdown. So tranquil.