Flying Saucer Attack - Distance LP

Label: VHF

Our Review:

Dave Pearce began his adventures in "rural psychedelia" back in 1993 under the moniker Flying Saucer Attack with a series of homespun shoegaze / drone-rock releases on his own FSA Records, based out of Bristol, England. Much of the work was uncredited but it's long assumed that Flying Saucer Attack drew in Rachel Brook (who later struck out on her own piloting Movietone) and Matt Elliott (aka Third Eye Foundation) and possibly others from Bristol's broader community that came and went through such projects as Amp, Crescent, Light, The Secret Garden, etc. Pearce's Flying Saucer Attack embraced a signature sound of murky fuzz and overblown 4-track distortion that draped upon his languid drone-rock hymns that were driven by his mournful Nick Drake whisper of a voice that somehow pushes through all of the swirl and drone.

Distance was first compiled back in 1994 as a collection of five tracks from the first three FSA singles with three tracks recorded during those same sessions. Those early self-published singles had quickly gone out of print, making this a necessity. These tracks follow the same dual track course laid down on the first record, with ungrounded echoplex bleariness set next to noise pop liberated through blown out Xpressway grit and shambolic radioluminescence. The punk throttle basslines that Rachel Brook gives to the FSA probably don't get due credit for providing the urgency for tracks like "Standing Stone" and "Soaring High," but these two tracks in particular highlight her influence on the FSA sound. It's still Pearce's chiming hypno-drone guitar that is center stage, dripping with a deep British folk melancholy that has been hot-wired and fried through a drugged-out noise not even Spacemen 3 had dreamed of.

This marks the first US vinyl of this album.