"Experimental mood music," it says on the sleeve. To be sure.
E.A.R., despite the stated goals also on the sleeve indicating that it would be a "loose affiliation" of musicians, Sonic Boom being but one of them, has in fact pretty much become Sonic's particular baby over the years, sometimes with others and sometimes very much without. But no matter who it's done in concert with, E.A.R. has proven a much more fertile ground for Pete Kember's extremely bemused muse than Spectrum has; nothing against Spectrum per se -- they've had some good albums and singles both -- but E.A.R. feels much more like Main, ie the next step up and out. Of course, sometimes 'progress' is a dirty word, but via E.A.R. Sonic makes it seem like the right thing to do all the time.
Which is of course ironic in that Sonic's music has always been about looking back to one extent or another -- kiddie cartoons, 60s TV kultur, drones from hither and yon, Stooges and Suicide in equal measure. So the understandable but applicable cliché is that he investigates futures that no longer are options to us; what in the 1960s is futuristic is thus to us retro, much like 1970s Kraftwerk hearkened back to the 1930s in the first place while at the same time seeming very much from the years ahead, a neat balancing act. Is Sonic a possible 90s equivalent? Arguably, perhaps, if not as epochal, but still in terms of pursuing those various options all at once.
Thus, Mesmerised, a record impossible to place any sort of lyrical take on for the good reason that there are no lyrics, none of the godlovesmack praises that are strewn throughout the Spacemen 3 family tree. Instead everything is looped oscillating ebb and flow, feedback upon feedback, flanging galore and then some. Heck, the fourth track is actually called "Guitar Feedback Manipulation," so what more need I really say?
Yet I do, to convey this point -- rather than being shards of sheer noise, this is a warm sound, very warm, and thus its beauty. Alien broadcasts might be one obvious but applicable way to describe this, the tones firing off at all frequencies, the occasional scrap of something 'clear' coming through (such as the soft guitar strumming during "Mesmerise 4901"), but this isn't the cold of space but the comfort of inner space, perhaps -- roaming the heart, floating in being, take your way to enlightenment or at least removal from the here and now. Blissful without being ecstatic might be a way to consider it, possibly. You smile when you hear "California Nocturne," because maybe this is how Smile was meant to be, something even beyond what Brian or the oodles of disciples could conceive, not so much a teenage symphony to god as technology's ode to its own creator, warm-blooded carbon-based lifeforms, instead. And indeed, why not? Ride on the gentle whizzes and waves -- floating was never so much fun.