Flying Saucer Attack

from All Music Guide:



Formed in Bristol, England in 1993, the elusive avant-noise project Flying Saucer Attack primarily comprised the duo of singers/guitarists David Pearce and Rachel Brook, refugees from the group Lynda's Strange Vacation who formed FSA as an outlet for their interest in home-recording experimentation. Drawing influence from Krautrock, folk, and dream pop, they emerged with the single "Soaring High," followed by an eponymously-titled 1993 debut LP which buried the group's narcoleptic vocals and amorphous songs under dense, organic sheets of feedback.



After 1994's Distance, a collection of atmospheric singles and unreleased material, FSA returned in 1995 with Further, a remarkably evocative work which transported the group's hypnotic guitar wash into a uniquely pastoral setting. Chorus, another singles compilation, followed later in the year, and with it came a declaration of the end of the group's initial phase, setting the stage for Flying Saucer Attack's continued evolution as one of the decade's most innovative and ambitious groups. 1997's New Lands was the first fruit of this new FSA, now a Pearce solo project exploring the possibilities of sampling; Brook, meanwhile, focused on her side group Movietone, a similarly blissed-out excursion into sound. FSA followed up New Lands three years later with Mirror.



from Wikipedia:



Flying Saucer Attack was an experimental indie rock band that formed in Bristol, England in 1992. David Pearce was the core member of the group, and Rachel Brook was a member for most of the band's lifetime.



The band were marked by quiet vocals and sheets of feedback with similarities to contemporary shoegazing bands, such as the Jesus and Mary Chain. FSA were able to create a small but enthusiastic fanbase as one of the more remarkable experimental bands of the day. The band were notable for recording most of their output at home into a normal home stereo system, avoiding recording studios as much as they could. This gave their music a DIY feel and gave them the freedom to experiment as much as they wanted.



Many of the principal musicians involved with FSA, including Pearce, attended Farnham Art College in the late 1980s. Pearce collaborated in a variety of bands with Matt Elliott (the Third Eye Foundation), Richard Walker (Amp), and Rachel Brook and Kate Wright (future partners in Movietone), before forming FSA with Brook (his girlfriend at the time) in 1992. Brook continued to play with Movietone throughout the history of Flying Saucer Attack, and is still a member of that group.



Early releases were limited edition vinyl 7" singles, often in handmade packaging. The first album (self-titled, but sometimes called Rural Psychedelia as those words appear on the cover) included a noisy cover of Suede's contemporary single "The Drowners", which provoked press interest in the record. The Third Eye Foundation (Matt Elliott) played bongos, drums, programming and clarinet, as well as guitar on some tracks. Like the early singles, the album was released on FSA's own Heartbeat label, and was deliberately only made available on vinyl. Also, like the singles, it sold out very quickly despite minimal publicity, due to the band's cult reputation. The album was released in the USA by VHF Records in early 1994, on CD and vinyl - the CD bore the legend "compact discs are a major cause of the breakdown of society" (other releases would carry messages such as "keep vinyl alive", or "CDs destroy music").



By 1994, the band had signed to Domino Records (which became home to many of the bands from Bristol's experimental music scene), and although records continued to be released on vinyl, CDs usually accompanied Pearce's preferred format. The first release for the new label was Distance, which collected the early singles and some unreleased material. Over the next three years, the band released two albums and further singles including a cover of Wire's "Outdoor Miner", and a version of the folk song "Sally Free and Easy" which was initially only released on CD - the sleevenote explained that the pressing plant had been unable to cut it to vinyl (a US plant later achieved the feat by using a monaural master and it was issued on 12" by Drag City). Another singles compilation followed alongside an album consisting of live tracks (mainly unstructured noise, released by Bruce Russell's Corpus Hermeticum imprint) and an LP with two long tracks constructed by fellow Domino act Tele:Funken from samples of the band. In 1995 Brook left the band to concentrate on Movietone. Chorus had a sleeve note which said: "This album marks the end of FSA phase one", but subsequent releases (New Lands was described as "phase two") did not depart from the usual mixture of aggressive feedback and noise, and gentle folk-influenced melody.



After New Lands and a final vinyl-only 7" single, Pearce left Domino Records - one further album was released in 2000 on Pearce's own Heartbeat records, and this effectively marked the end of the group. Pearce subsequently collaborated with Jessica Bailiff under the name Clear Horizon, a self-titled album being released on Kranky Records in 2003.



from Domino Records website:



From behind the pulp sci-fi name, Dave Pearce's Flying Saucer Attack enact a very English invasion, a benign takeover of the senses. The first to emerge into a haze of the 90s drone rock resurgence, FSA albums like Distance, Further, and New Lands take the listener on a forlorn tour, a psychic drive that married Pearce's emotional landscapes with the hinterlands of his native West Country.



Covering Cyril Tawney's Sally Free and Easy and Wire's Outdoor Miner in six string blizzards and namechecking Popul Vuh, Pearce drew together the loose threads of bygone psychedelic folk, Krautrock, and post punk - the stitches in time of FSA's feedback fabric. Such timeslips were mirrored in the group's reverse logic: where most bands expand, FSA contracted, with early collaborators Rachel Brook and Matt Elliot taking flight to their Movietone and Third Eye Foundation projects. While others took tentative steps toward the technological imperative, Pearce swapped the PC's screen burn for the 4-track.



An uplifting alloy of therapeutic noise and subliminal whispers, Flying Saucer Attack continue to reverberate long and loud amongst the sound-sensitives tuned into Pearce's alien frequencies.



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AllMusic Guide - FSA entry



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