Track Listing

1. You know it's true
2. If I were with her now
3. I want you
4. Run
5. Smiles
6. Step into the breeze
7. Symphony space
8. Take your time
9. Shine a light
10. Angel sigh
11. Sway
12. 200 bars

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6462 in Music
• Released on: 2000-05-15
• Number of discs: 1

From Amazon.com
Long before they were floating in space, Jason Pierce and friends were exploring the far reaches of the pop universe on Lazer Guided Melodies. Essentially four suites, it was an album on which nothing was as it seemed; all was processed and tinkered with, while horns and brass offered glory and fulfillment to the keyboards, guitars, and vocals. It was, really, the new space rock, drugged to oblivion and gazing at the planets, the modern psychedlia. Best heard on headphones, isolated in a darkened room, this was the sound of shapes to come. Chris Nickson

Customer Reviews

MUSIC THAT SHINES
If you were introduced to Spiritualized by the "Ladies and Gentlemen..." album (which is their best work to date), this is where you continue.

"Lazer Guided Melodies" is their 1992 debut and includes four song cycles that float like luminiscent lava. The first track, "You Know Its True" is a slow number of shimmering beauty and an antidote to the sadness of Spiritualized's latest studio album.

Other highlights include the rockier "Run" (partially stolen from Velvet Underground and JJ Cale), "I Want You" and the hypnotizing and jazzy feel of "Shine A Light".

This album is a psychedelic masterpiece,but not in the retro sense. It is an album for the 21st century, and at the same time it is connected with the traditions of blues, jazz and psychedelia.

If you loved "Ladies and Gentlemen...", you will also be enjoying this - it is pure Spiritualized magic, floating in space and drifting in time.

Fast, slow, floaty, fast - Lazer Guided!!
Spiritualized's debut album is arguablly their finest. Their brand of 'Trance-rock' reaches powerful heights, which are echoed in Ladies and gentlemen... but never as perfect as here. 'Run' is an uptempo bouncer, along with 'Angel sigh', but Spiritualized's tue genius is in the floaty, slow spaced-out tracks such as 'Symphony Space' and 'Sway'. This is where the Spiritualized sound really takes off. The entire album is filled with beautiful droning noise and frenzied guitars that make this a classic album and a must for people getting into Spiritualized or is thinking about buying a Spiritualized album. One of the best debut albums ever, and one of the few never to be bettered by later albums.

There is a light that will never go out
Ex “Melody Maker” scribe and renowned music journalist Simon Reynolds once described Jason Pearce, along with Bobby Gillespie as one of rock music’s scholars. Someone who can transcend their influences and record collection and renew rather than replicate. Essentially it’s a poncey way of saying they are more than mere copyists. Then he started blathering on about how a band like Spiritualized were infused with Apollonian attitudes ( Airiness, radiance serenity) rather than traditional Dionysian rock conventions and my head started to hurt. He was, as usual correct though, and nowhere is this better represented on what is by the length of any winged ankle their finest album.
It’s a brilliant album title as well as it encapsulates so very well what the music within is like-suffuse with light and with each track hitting a singular groove, eschewing linear expansion and recalling great Kraut bands like Kraftwerk and Neu who specialised in a free way form of rock known as “Motorik” .
With sly irony there is a track called “Run” which is propelled by a scalding fuzz-riff yet still leaves trails of sparkling iridescence in its wake. “If I Were With Her Now’s knee stepping bass line wouldn’t be out of place on some funked up floor filler but the fizzing repeated one chord note takes it somewhere else altogether. As do the multi -layered vocals that permeate the songs glorious honey dazed climax. ”Step Into The Breeze” highlights the bands increasing utilisation of strings and brass and segues into “Symphony Space”, all orchestral resonance and aching ebb and flow. “You know it’s True” suggests the heat of some impassioned lover is fluttering this music along as does “I Want You” whose guitars and consumptive tenderness point to a blurred edge of desperation. This is so good it hurts. “Angel Sigh” does the old ambient drift elliptical thing before exploding into euphoric redemptive elation .Wraithlike brass and out of phase vocals pretty much repeat the formula on “200 bars” which suggests that out of all the universal forces perhaps heat, medicine ,love and music are the greatest. A chiming note of optimism then.
There is no doubt that music is a universal language that crosses boundaries like nothing else. It bleeds across race, creed and culture and can take the listener somewhere else in the blink of an eye. “Lazer Guided Melodies” like all truly great music does this so effortlessly it’s breathtaking and seems to suggest that the power of music and love combined can burst us, glowing with tumultuous radiance, onto a higher plain of existence. Hippy tosh maybe, but while this album is playing you will believe. Ride the light and break on through.