From The Vault: Spacemen 3 - “Sound of Confusion” (1986)

For me, the cover says it all, what could be more psychedelic then the entire band looking off into the distance and one member turning just as the picture is being taken, to look you right in your dialated eyes … as if knowing that you were looking [listening] was more important than what was drawing the band’s attention.

And in truth, that’s a great statement to make … it says that the band is consciously aware of their fans, that we are out there listening, that Spacemen 3 are not so caught up in their own world that they’ve forgotten us … and that my friends is why this band has and will continue to make some of the most consistent fuzz guitar driven, layered, and textured psychedelic music for years to come. In the front of their space driven minds, they keep the fact, that we are on this journey with them, that we are giving them the time and space to take us on their trip, and they in turn have made the effort to allow us sit back and do nothing but enjoy the ride.

This disc is like a vial of warm liquid, it’s produced and executed as well as anything that will come from the band in the future, and that consistency will be appreciated. Now this may sound as if I’m saying that contextually this album is the same as every other … it is, and it isn’t. One must look at the music of Spacemen 3 as variations on a theme … they are constantly exploring and developing this theme, every outing has taken us just a little bit further, or shines a light on an aspect of our inner galaxie we may have over looked … much like the disembodied voice of the spaceship captain, through a crackling speaker saying, “Ladies and Gentlemen, if you will look out of your right side porthole you will catch the splendor of Andromeda rising through the purple rings of Saturn.”

Sound Of Confusion is simply the first of many memorial adventures I’ve had while traveling with this timeless band … I only wish I had a postcard to send you, but for now, you can enjoy the soundtrack.

– Jenell Kesler