Track Listing

1. Losing Touch With My Mind
2. Hey Man
3. Rollercoaster
4. Mary Anne
5. Little Doll
6. 2.35
7. OD Catastrophe

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12480 in Music
• Released on: 2009-06-22
• Number of discs: 1

CD Description
SOUND OF CONFUSION, the Spacemen 3's 1986 debut, is the band's most song-oriented album. CONFUSION features several covers-including Glen Campbell's "Mary Anne", Iggy Pop's "Little Doll", and the band's excellent extended reinterpretation of the 13th Floor Elevators' psychedelic classic "Rollercoaster"- alongside such originals as "Walkin' With Jesus", the song that would become the Spacemen 3's signature track.
Recording with a full-time drummer for the only time in the band's six-year career, Pete "Sonic Boom" Kember and Jason "Spaceman" Pierce here show only hints of the sound-for-sound's-sake obsessions of their later solo projects Spectrum andSpiritualised-particularly on the mesmerising "Hey Man" andthe sleepy "2.35". Instead, most of the comparatively pop-oriented SOUND OF CONFUSION recalls the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray" as reinterpreted by a group of electrified new-age musicians. The Taang! reissue contains bonus alternate versions of three tracks plus the otherwise unavailable "FeelSo Good".

Customer Reviews

Fantastic!
The hugely influential Spacemen 3 at their best. This music is pure low-fi psychedelic heaven. Simple thundering bass lines and hypnotic whirls abound. One of the great psychedelic garage classics.

Spacemen 3's debut album...
Believe it or not, but at one time it wasn't that easy to buy records by The Stooges or The Velvet Underground. This is demonstrated by the many bands of the 1970s and 80s who nodded their way who might have been criticised a lot more had the Velvets-records been more prominent. There were many acts of that era who nodded back to them and the garage-rock popularised on Lenny Kaye's seminal-'Nuggets' compilation : The Jesus & Mary Chain, REM, Sonic Youth, The Modern Lovers, Patti Smith, Orange Juice, Primal Scream, Mudhoney, Echo & the Bunnymen, Television, The Fall, Joy Division, Pussy Galore etc. Spacemen 3, hasten to add, were part of this loose-set - heavily influenced by The Stooges & The Velvets, alongside The Cramps, The MC5 & The 13th Floor Elevators...

Coming from Rugby in the mid-1980s, Spacemen 3 were generally centred around the duo Peter Kember (a.k.a. Sonic Boom) & Jason Pierce (who would later form Spiritualized) - here they are a conventional four-piece garage-rock outfit with members who would later form The Darkside. The debut album is fairly split between cover-versions and original-songs, though the latter are heavily influenced by some of the above names.

The covers of 'Little Doll' (The Stooges) & 'Rollercoaster' (The 13th Floor Elevators) aren't that different from the original versions - though it should be noted that their presence on 'Sound of Confusion' turned me onto the originals. Their take of 'Mary Anne'- a country-track - is much more interesting, sounding like the missing link between 'Bad Moon Rising' & 'Psychocandy.'

The drug-ethos of Spacemen 3 is more than apparent- whether 'Losing Touch With My Mind' (laying the ground for 'Take Me to the Other Side' the following year) or the epic psych-freakout of 'O.D. Catastrophe'. The band would develop away from the garage-rock here on 'The Perfect Presciption', shifting towards the drones of 'Playing With Fire' thereafter...

'Sound of Confusion' is a fine debut, though a record that sounds quite unoriginal if you have heard 'The Stooges','White Light/White Heat','Easter Everywhere' or 'High Time.' The beginning of a great journey, that would lead to such joys as 'Revolution','Hypnotised', 'Transparent Radiation' & 'Walkin' With Jesus.'

All 3 is good for you
This is an underrated cd that packs more of a punch than some of the other spacemen 3 music..
The last track O.D. catastrophe is of course influenced by The Stooges TV Eye
from the album Fun House.
Dreamweapon is also worth getting along with Playing with Fire but make sure you get the 2cd edition coz the second cd's versions are fantastic especially the track'Suicide'