Spiritualized
February 18th, 2009 by sparky
Spiritualized will perform at The Big Chill 2009.
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Spiritualized - Biography
Formed from the ashes of the trance-rockers Spacemen 3, singer/guitarist Jason Pierce’s group Spiritualized did not break away from his prior band’s trademark hypnotic minimalism; instead, they perfected it. Drawing on the continued influence of the Velvet Underground, La Monte Young, and Steve Reich, Spiritualized staked out a common ground between minimalism and lush symphonics — while powered by simple, repetitious motifs, their songs simultaneously blossomed into rich, shimmering sonic panoramas inspired by the majestic studio wizardry of Phil Spector and Brian Wilson. Such seeming contradictions were essential to the group’s alchemy: while the infamous Spacemen 3 tag of “taking drugs to make music to take drugs to” remained a cornerstone of their craft, at the same time Spiritualized’s very name acknowledged the existence of other forces, further reflected in their heavy debt to gospel and soul music as well as an affinity for mantras and devotional hymns.
Although Spiritualized fully emerged after the acrimonious breakup of Spacemen 3, in truth the band’s roots extended back to the band’s final LP, 1990’s Recurring. A Spacemen 3 album in name only, Recurring was split evenly between independently recorded work from Pierce and estranged partner Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember; as a result, while Kember’s side presaged his eventual work with Spectrum, Pierce’s half, recorded with most of the musicians who would later comprise Spiritualized (including guitarist Mark Refoy, bassist Willie B. Carruthers, and drummer Jon Mattock), predated the orchestral drones that became the band’s hallmark. The first true Spiritualized single, a dramatic reading of the Troggs’ “Anyway That You Want Me,” was the final nail in the coffin — reportedly, Kember was so incensed by the Spacemen 3 logo which appeared on the disc’s jacket that he disbanded the group for good.
In 1991, Spiritualized returned with a string of EPs — Feel So Sad, Run/I Want You, and Smile/Sway — before their long-awaited debut, Lazer Guided Melodies, finally appeared the following year. The masterful, blissed-out result of Pierce’s obsessive studio fine-tuning and endless remixing, the album was promoted by the band’s slot on the high-profile Rollercoaster tour, where they appeared with the Jesus and Mary Chain and Curve. An excellent limited-edition live document, Fucked Up Inside, followed in 1993, trailed by another EP, Electric Mainline, later in the year.
In 1995, Spiritualized — now a trio consisting of Pierce, keyboardist/guitarist Kate Radley, and bassist Sean Cook — issued Pure Phase, a heady, dense production which boasted separate mixes from each stereo channel. With 1997’s Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space, Pierce deliberately jettisoned many of the band’s usual points of departure, including drones, tremolos, and phase tones; recorded with new drummer Damon Reece, it featured a cameo appearance from legendary New Orleans pianist Dr. John on one track, while Memphis studio legend Jim Dickinson appeared on another. Other guests included the Balanescu Quartet (also featured on Pure Phase), the Greater London Gospel Community Choir, and Spring Heel Jack. The two-disc Royal Albert Hall October 10 1997 live album followed in late 1998.
The following year, Pierce gutted Spiritualized’s lineup, firing Cook, Reece, and Mike Mooney, who formed Lupine Howl soon after their dismissal; Radley apparently left soon after she married Verve frontman and solo artist Richard Ashcroft. Only saxophonist Ray Dickaty and sometime keyboardist Thighpaulsandra (aka Tim Lewis) remained in the band. Pierce began writing and recording material for the next Spiritualized album at George Martin’s Air Studios and recruited percussionist Tom Edwards, bassist Martin Shallards, Echoboy drummer Kev Bales, and guitarist Dogan, from Julian Cope’s band, for the sessions. The new album, Let It Come Down, which featured an even lusher, more involved sound than Ladies and Gentlemen, was released in mid-2001. The follow-up, 2003’s Amazing Grace, was more of a back-to-basics record.
In 2008, Jason Spaceman returned with his sixth studio outing under the Spiritualized banner, Songs In A&E a record - more even than any of its predecessors in the Spiritualized canon.
Jason explains. “The idea was to record and put the record out quick, but then I became ill. I had double pneumonia. I had legionnaires’ disease or something, so…I was quite ill, it took it out of me.”
At his lowest ebb, Jason spent a couple of weeks in intensive care. “I lost weight,” he says. “I was in a bad way for a few months. It was a big gap in the making of this record, it was a big thing to get through, and to get over.”
Initially, however, the album had seemed almost blessed by a bizarre external twist of fate, part of rock mythology.
“We found a guitar in a shop in Cincinnati,” Jason recalls, “a 1929 Gibson, absolutely immaculate. It was in a store full of the things, and it just sounded unlike anything else in there. I had no money but I kind of knew that I had to have the guitar, we found the man and took the guitar away, and it almost seemed like it came with the songs attached.”
Jason pauses, and laughs. “The songs came really quick after that, within about two weeks or so. This record is the first one where I just sat down and wrote songs on a guitar, usually I just get ideas in my head and put them onto tape. So doing it this way, writing on an acoustic guitar, seemed like something I hadn’t really done.”
Somewhere between penning the tunes/words, and the point where any of them had been fully prepared for release, Jason’s illness kicked in. He wouldn’t return to his work-in-progress for the best part of two years. When he finally did, it was difficult to regain the creative impetus:
“It was very hard to reattach myself to the record.” he says, “It took a long time, to try and rediscover what my original thought processes were. But it would’ve been equally hard to just let the songs go, because they’re invested with a huge amount of emotion.”
His way back into the record was an offer to provide the soundtrack to Mr Lonely, a new movie by director Harmony Korine, (Gummo, Julian Donkey Boy, Kids).
“While I was doing stuff for Harmony’s film, I also worked on the ‘Harmony’ pieces [on Songs In A&E]. They’re called that as a reference to him, and also because they’re kind of harmonic pieces. They suggested a way of putting the original tracks together.”
Jason’s confidence was given a further boost, when invites started flooding in to perform his so-called ‘Acoustic Mainlines’ gigs, everywhere from All Tomorrow’s Parties in Minehead, to the Harlem Apollo in New York. The band – 3 gospel singers, a 7-piece string section, Spiritualized member Tony Foster on Fender Rhodes piano, and, Jason on acoustic guitar and vocals – pretty much brought the house down wherever it went.
“It sounds dumb, but we were on stage at some of those shows with tears rolling out of eyes and across our faces. There was just this amazing reaction to what we were doing. It was like doing a show without production – not about lights and bombast, just about the delivery of these songs – and I think people were genuinely moved by it. It felt like a good place to be.”
Suitably vibed up by each live excursion, Jason got stuck back into the 1929 Gibson songs, reworking them often with the same choir/strings/acoustic format, and often road-testing them out onstage. The likes of ‘Soul On Fire’, ‘Sitting On Fire’ and ‘Goodnight, Goodnight’ will be familiar to anyone who witnessed the increasingly momentous ‘Acoustic Mainlines’ shows through 2007.
The album that slowly took shape has all the flow of previous Spiritualized classics, only here there is no hiding behind studio effects, or screaming tornados of guitar feedback.
“There’s is no need to over-complicate things, to be wilfully strange in music. These songs are simple in their construction, but they’re honest’
The result, then, is a record true to Jason’s original tenet of simplicity, but completely unlike any of his others, thanks to its naked, unelaborate sound. Songs like ‘Baby I’m Just A Fool’ and ‘Goodnight Goodnight’ and ‘Death Take Your Fiddle’ find Pierce’s voice, ever a fragile but engaging instrument, taking stage centre in its fatigued vulnerability, in each case supported by exquisite angel’s breath from the choir, and the subtlest of instrumental backing.
However, ‘Songs In A & E’ is hardly an ‘unplugged’ record: check ‘You Lie, You Cheat’, and the Can-ish LSD howl of ‘I Gotta Fire’.
So, after an album genesis even more harrowing than he might have anticipated, Jason now prepares to do what for him is the more care-free part of his trade – live performance. He will return with a full Spiritualized line up in the UK in May with dates around the world to follow.
Spiritualized will perform at The Big Chill 2009.
A-Z line-up | Buy tickets
February 20th, 2009 at 7:46 am
OH GET IN…if Big Chill wasn’t compulsory before it is now. Cannot wait for this…Mr Spaceman, this will be AMAZING.