Spaceman Sir. – The Great Filter
Spaceman Sir. – The Great Filter
Self-Released
Release Date: 12.06.24
Running Time: 53:05
Review by Dark Juan
A quadrillion/10
The state of me right now! I am an absolute fucking disgrace at the moment. It was my birthday a few days ago and I have been attempting to recreate my youth and the prodigious alcohol consumption of said part of my life. Having now attained half a century not out this has not been the brightest idea I have ever had. And now the old grey matter and my aching archaic bones are paying the price for downing booze like there’s no tomorrow and then going and standing watching aeroplanes in 30-degree heat for several sweaty hours. Truly, this past week has not been any of my finest work, yet my desire to carry on drinking hasn’t diminished one jot and Mrs Dark Juan has commented that I have been moving like a stop motion animation that is not entertaining since we got back from the Blackpool Airshow. It was worth it and the three hours of traffic I endured there and back as I finally got to see a Typhoon in the flesh, as well as an L-39 Albatros and indulged in a little bit of nostalgia with the twin De Havilland Chipmunk display, as that aircraft was the very first aircraft I ever flew, as well as the first aircraft I ever flew solo. I also have given myself a touch of heatstroke. Hence, instead of hammering the Penderyn single malt (a very decent dram even if it is distilled in Wales) some more, I have elected to seat myself in front of my pooter, ready to activate the Platter of Splatter ™.
But who to choose?
I have an extensive list of bands that I need to review because I have been out of the loop for a while, yet nestled among the endless amount of writing I have yet to do was Spaceman Sir. being (the period at the end of his name being part of the name of the project and therefore not grammatically incorrect – Ever-Metal.com grammar police) a one-man musical project, and also the person behind the music being one of the most painfully polite people whose email I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Dark Juan appreciates manners and respect, although Dark Juan is of the opinion that Dark Juan should be offering musicians respect because they are actually pouring their hearts and souls into their music, and all Dark Juan does is use their music as a vehicle for cheap laughs and write about it, BECAUSE HE CAN’T ACTUALLY DO WHAT THEY ARE DOING HIMSELF.
So, Spaceman Sir. First of all, all I know about him is that he is based in London somewhere, and I know this album was released in June, but I only got the promo in July and then I had to adult for a considerable time, and I have only just been able to squeeze this review time in, so I offer my sincerest apologies to Spaceman Sir. for this. Anyway, the record opens with an instrumental piece called ‘class Filter (Intermezzo)’ that chucks everything from hyperspeed drumming to classical works transposed to guitar in there and proudly shoves it into the face of the listener. It’s a solid opening gambit that whets the appetite for more unusual sounds in a salivatory fashion.
‘filter’ is next up and with a soulful, crooning vocal and very laid-back groove it reminds Dark Juan very much of the more relaxed moments of the likes of Smashing Pumpkins and a bit of Dinosaur Jr in the emotiveness of the guitar work. It is a maudlin, heartstring-tugging epic of a song that builds from simplicity to full on orchestral accompaniment. It’s fucking glorious, is what it is, whereas ‘while True’ is different again, holding the thought of Deftones’ Chino Moreno being all winsome and charming, but over a very spiky Math Metal riff and the middle eight going gloriously Trad Metal briefly before chucking in a bit of solid-state 80s electronics and hammering the floor tom to within an inch of its life, then soaring majestically onward in a style of such majesty that Dark Juan is rolling on the floor in ecstasy… Until Spaceman Sir. stops it dead in the middle of the tune before changing gear and hitting the full-on teenage Goth Metal market for the second part of the song.
‘try: except: finally?’ goes somewhere different again – it begins with some crushing, Eastern-tinged Metal with an underpinning of stabby, KMFDM-like electronics, before morphing into a bizarre, almost Chiptune chamber music analogue that would not be out of place on an Emilie Autumn album. For all of a minute before Spaceman Sir. decides instead that he is in a classic Death Metal band and hits hyperspeed, then once more morphs into a Cyber Metal band, complete with Burton C. Bell-esque howling in the verse, and clean singing in the chorus. The mix of Classic Metal influences and the kind of Industrial drumming and riffing is absolutely fucking infectious, and my four-day hangover is dissipating rapidly. The only problem with this is now Dark Juan wants to pour ridiculous amounts of beer down his neck. Oh, wait. Now the song has turned into a maudlin Gothic dirge, all wailing viola and chord medleys. We are still only five minutes into this over ten-minute song. And it has just changed again to a bizarre futuristic Emo anthem, all epic soloing and chiming electronics. I can’t keep up with this absolute shapeshifter of a song – the vibe of it reminds Dark Juan very much of ‘The Drapery Falls’ by Opeth – it has that same exploratory, almost symphony-like quality, the fact that there are disparate, clearly articulated movements in the song making it rather more of an experience rather than something you merely listen to. It is a musical story, a tale told through sound.
Fuck, this album is hard as hell to categorise. Which means it is doing exactly what it is supposed to, being as Spaceman Sir. is supposed to be an abstract, an amalgamation of disparate elements welded together to create whole new orders of magnitude. While it is by no means the heaviest music in the world it is supremely listenable despite being a singularly unusual, almost abstruse piece of work, clearly deeply personal to the performer and deeply idiosyncratic in it’s taking of tropes and playing merry fucking hell with them to produce something so fucking unique that even Dark Juan’s powers of description are struggling to cope with this smorgasbord of sounds.
However, and this is the kicker, despite the sheer and untrammelled eclecticism on display in Spaceman Sir.’s music (‘pass’ being a bizarre analogue of Dance and guitar-based chiminess with full on Gothic organ) nothing feels forced or out of place. The music has been masterfully arranged and designed to offer the kind of power you only get with super-technical Death Metal bands. The baroque quality of the music, the robustness of the Metal, and the absolute refusal to conform to any known musical genre makes Spaceman Sir. very special indeed, and Dark Juan immediately places their importance just below that of The Chronicles Of Manimal and Samara. Anyone who knows Dark Juan knows of his love of TCOMAS and will appreciate that this makes Spaceman Sir. colossal in Dark Juan’s mind.
The Patented Dark Juan Blood Splat Rating System has no hesitation in awarding Spaceman Sir. a quadrillion/10 for a record of almost paralysing uniqueness that has boggled Dark Juan’s mind to the extent that he is now seated in his chair wondering if there is any point writing anything else this afternoon because nothing will be able to follow Spaceman Sir.
Get thee behind me, musical Satan!!!!
TRACKLISTING: (The capitalisations are exactly as they were sent to Dark Juan, so take your grammar Nazism elsewhere. Muchos gracias!)
01. class Filter (intermezzo)
02. def__init__(self)
03. filter
04. while True
05. try: except: finally?
06. pass
07. sleep()
08. return
LINE-UP:
Spaceman Sir. – Everything because he is an uber-talented bastard, and I am totally unworthy of even writing about him.
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
