Life-Affirming Fuzz from Above

 

Flying Saucer Attack - Wish

Flying Saucer Attack - Popol Vuh 1

Flying Saucer Attack inspire the sort of devotion from their fans that makes them more of a cult than a band. It’s rare that I meet anybody who’s heard of them but whenever I do, we speak about them with reverence. They are a truly special band. I first encountered them while nursing a broken heart and living in a flat in Camden, Bath in 1995. It was love at first listen. I’m a sucker for feedback and FSA main man David Pearce had that rare talent of being able to transform sheets of squalling white noise into something beautiful. With Movietone’s Rachel Brook (Pearce’s girlfriend at the time) on bass, FSA’s self-titled debut album was released in 1993. It was sub-titled Rural Psychedelia and there is definitely something agricultural about the unrefined distortion of the compositions. Unlike Kevin Shields, Pearce didn’t attempt to hone or control the feedback, he just let it rip. Maybe this was born of necessity (most of the early FSA material was recorded on a four-track) but it is still brave to choose to deliver your musical vision in such an abrasive way. If you strip away all the feedback on Wish there is a fragile, spectral folk song at the core. It’s like Nick Drake collaborating with Spacemen 3. But Pearce was no one trick pony. Matt Elliot of Third Eye Foundation played percussion on early FSA material and his tribal bongos underpin Pearce’s haunting ambience on Popol Vuh 1 - a hypnotic tribute to the cult krautrockers. The album had a profound affect on me. I found the billowing gusts of extreme noise strangely soothing as I wallowed in my misery, chain-smoking and staring out of my bedroom window to the hills on the outskirts of the city. I’d lost one love but found another.

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Thursday, May 13, 2010   ()