No Filler Music Podcast - Sidetrack: Lazer Guided Melodies - Spiritualized's 4-Suite Space Rock Masterpiece

Episode Date: March 23, 2020

On this week's Sidetrack we're listening to one of Billy Corgan's favorite bands, Spiritualized, with a couple non-singles from their '92 debut Lazer Guided Melodies. Another example of just how varied the landscape of nineties rock was shaping up to be, LGM is at times quite minimalist and cinematic, and other times much more progressive and heavy, with a solid shoegaze backbone. The album's twelve songs are segued together into four color-coded, cross-faded suites, each one providing their own unique 15-minute dream-pop experience. Spiritualized - Step Into The Breeze Spiritualized - If I Were With Her Now Spiritualized - Angel Sigh Biosphere - Lounge Falcons of Fine Dining - Wash Your Hands Spiritualized - Run This show is a part of the Pantheon Podcast network. ***For a limited time only, use the promo code NOFILLER at adamandeve.com for 50% off one item plus other some FREE stuff!! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Not available in remote locations. See additional terms at onepellaton.com slash home dash trial. And welcome to No Filler. The music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles on our favorite records. My name is Quentin. I've got my brother Travis with me as always. And we're hunkering down, dude. We are staying indoors. I don't know about you. We got to talk about the virus, man. We can't just pretend like nothing's happening. Yeah. Yeah. Podcasts for me. I mean,

this is this is day two for me for working from home, like mandatory remote working. Yep. And part of me likes it. Part of me is already getting stark crazy a little bit. Yeah, dude, me too. We're trying to, like, just get up, get out and do a lap around the neighborhood or something like that, you know, once a day just to leave, you know? Yeah. But then every time, because I'm super paranoid, it's like, anytime we pass somebody, I'm like, well, there is. Like, guaranteed, I just got it just by walking by that person. Guarantee.

Well, but dude, if you see someone coming your way, just cross over to the other side of the street. Yeah, but this is not, we're walking through, like, trails and stuff. There's no street. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we did that too today. We're trying to get out and hike because, you know, I live up in Washington. There's plenty of places to go out and seclude yourself, yeah. Yeah, but, you know, we're going to pass at least three or four people while we're hiking.

I mean, here's the thing. If the person's not breathing on you, I doubt walking past them quickly is going to amount to anything. But they do say that it's airborne, you know, it's not just through touch. So, you know, either I stay indoors for the next eight weeks and hunk her down or I lighten up a little bit. go outside. Yeah. Well, either way, yeah, this is crazy. You know, as far as the music industry is concerned, everybody's,

last week when they canceled South by Southwest and Coachella, that's when I think everybody started to pay attention because, like, Coachella is like the epicenter of music festivals, you know. And if they cancel, something's going down, man. And then, of course, NBA, all the major sports. sporting events, you know, cancel their seasons and stuff. But yeah, as far as music is concerned, yeah, it's crazy. It's nuts, man.

One thing that's cool, the Seattle Symphony is streaming performances live online. And I just saw that some major bands are playing live stream concerts. Like Colplay just did one, Keith Urban. So that's kind of cool. It is cool. Yeah, I like that. Anyways, yeah, I've got all the free time in the world right now, dude. I'm temporarily laid off.

My restaurant just closed, like every restaurant up here. And pretty soon, every restaurant in America seems like it's going to be closing the doors for a little bit. Yeah, you know, I wonder what's going to happen to fast food restaurants. Like, are they going to close? Because right now I'm just seeing a ton of advertisements on Facebook and stuff for like, you know, What a Burger is basically like, hey, you know, you can use our app. to order ahead and then we'll just hand you the bag out the window. Like they're really trying to get creative with how they're, you know,

trying to encourage people to come back out, you know. I mean, they're still doing drive-through service. Which makes sense, you know, it's just, you don't have to go inside. You just grab the food and you're gone. But obviously all it takes is one, one of fast food worker to get the virus and then, well, oops. Right. And, yeah, and they're going to still go to work because they don't have any other choice. Well, I'm hoping they're doing what your restaurant was doing, where they're requiring you to take your temperature when you sign in to work that day, clock in or whatever.

Yeah. Yep. Yeah. That's what they were doing before we closed. Yeah. And that has been COVID-19 talk with the twin brothers. Yeah. I mean, we can be having this little weekly chat here for the next two months or so.

Yeah, at least. Yeah, man. Anyways. So last week we talked. about Smashing Pumpkins and their debut album Gish. And for the sidetrack, I was just kind of looking through trying to find like influences for the band or, you know, some of Billy Corgan's favorite bands at the time. And he mentions this band called Spiritualized as one of his favorite bands.

I don't know about you, Trave, but I've never heard of Spiritualized. Like, I haven't even read that name before as, you know, like I didn't know that was there was a band called Spiritualized. Yeah, I had never heard of him either. Never, yeah, never heard anything about them. Definitely never heard any songs from them. So they are a experimental space rock dream pop band. Space rock is mentioned several times when people talk about spiritualized.

So I went ahead and just press play on track one of their very first album, which came out in 92. And dude, I was hooked right from track. one. And it's just one of those moments where it's like, dude, all these years it could have been jamming this album. All these years it could have been enjoying this band. How did I miss him? Can't dwell on that, cute. How did I miss him? Hey, you know what? You found him now and you're jamming him now. That's all you need to know. So the album is called laser guided melodies. Again, it came out in 1992. The cool thing about this album, this is one of those, you know, we preach it all the time on this podcast. This is a press play and listen to it all the way through. So it's 12 songs and they all

really flow together well. The way that they originally released this, it was on, it was on two LPs and also this was, you know, in the CD age. So the way they did it was, if you look on the back of the album cover, the songs are kind of grouped together. and they're color-coded. So basically the album is four sweets, and each chunk of songs is about 15 minutes long. So if you bought the CD, it was only four tracks on the CD.

One track would have the first three songs. Track two would have tracks four through seven and so on. So, I mean, but now obviously they split them up, right? No, no, it's all split up. Yeah. And if you buy the LP, tracks 1 through 3 and red tracks 4 through 7 are green so that's like side a it's pretty cool and what's great about it they really are separate like vibes and and overall sounds it really is

four distinct styles it's great my favorite section would be tracks 4 through 7 which i play a little bit of step into the breeze for the intro and we're going to outro out with run both those songs are single, so I didn't want to do them as like the main song that we're going to play. But it, yeah, again, it's a really great album. It's just, it's one of those that you just need to, to give a listen to, to really appreciate. It's very like, like I said, ambient at times. There's a lot of moments in there that sound very like Velvet Underground. There's a song called Run on here that I said, I'm going to play at the end. And he actually like borrows a line, basically from the Velvet Underground song, Run, Run, Run, Run.

And he kind of phrases it the same way in the song. So they're not even trying to hide it. No, definitely a not. He's definitely a big Lou Reed, Velvet Underground fan. Anyways, man, this is a side track. I want to keep it short and sweet. Let's just fucking play a song. I might play a couple tracks here just a little bit,

give you a sense of a couple different sweets and how they sound. Let's play track two. this one is called If I were with her now Yeah I mean you definitely Like you said it's a It's a movement You know like kind of reminds me of

Our conversations about progressive Rock with yes Oh yeah And totally Or even better Moody Blues right That record that we That we touched on Days of Future past

Where it was you know It was just like this It had four different movements No yeah it's cool dude like and that was just one song it so i wanted to play the majority of it just because you know it kind of had that little silence and right in the middle and then it completely changes um yeah really really like experimental stuff for sure um and dude this is just another one of those great examples of how you know all the different things that were going on with rock in the 90s

I feel like the 90s may have been like the first era in music where so many things are borrowed from from previous generations as far as I mean like all the different sub genres that that rock stems off and forms from you know nowadays with this like you can hear influences like the Velvet Underground you can hear I hear the who in in quite a few of these songs, especially in the second movement. Do you want to know who I heard when I first listened to some of these tracks? What? Have you ever listened to the Stone Roses before? No, I never heard them. Dude, big time. There's a few tracks on this record that have some heavy debut record Stone Roses vibes,

which they came out in the 80s. Okay. But yeah, to the point you were making about how the 90s was perhaps like the first decade that barred from previous decades, like heavily barred. I feel like you just need time, you know? That's why you're hearing the 90s come back, both in fashion right now and in music, because you just need that time to wear like, oh, it's cool again, you know? Yeah.

And like with the 90s, you had, as far, in terms of rock and roll, you had essentially three decades to pull for, you know, or at least two if you go 60s and 70s. Yeah. Because a lot of 90s was about trying to get away from the 80s. That's what the Grunge music was all about, you know. Yeah, yeah. So, you know, going back to us, we've talked about Dream Pop before. And with Dream Pop being synonymous with Shoegays, this is definitely, this has got a lot of great

shoegays, dream pop kind of moments. Pitchfork actually back, just a couple of years back, a list of the 30 best Dream Pop album. of all time. They put this one at number 11. So, yeah, so I want to play just a little bit of another song just to give you a taste of, you know, kind of the changes in sound and vibes between each suite. We're going to jump down. So that was at the very beginning of the album, the first suite. And I'm going to play the first song that wraps up with the fourth suite. So this is track 10. it's called Angel Sye. I just gave a little taste of that one.

Good stuff, man. Yeah, I go back to what I was saying about Stone Roses again. Yeah. A little less, for this song, definitely more Velvet Underground than Stone Roses, like you were saying. But, yeah, man, I'm trying to put my finger on another band that it kind of sounds like. So when did this record come out again? 1992. 92.

Yeah, there's just a ton of stuff going on. But what I was trying to think of is if I hear any Smashy Pumpkins in this, or as far as like, is it, you know, Spassie Pumpkins has already, you know, GISH has already happened. But yeah, because you said that these guys were a big influence on him, or he was just a fan of them? Not an influence, you know, but Corgan's a fan of this band.

And I, you know, I don't remember when he was quoted is saying that. But yeah, this is a band that that he enjoys listening to. And I can see, I can see some influences too. I mean, it kind of, I feel like they both have that soft vocal delivery. There are moments in the song that, that are, you know, it's just in that shoegaze pocket, just like with, with smashing pumpkins and my bloody Valentine and all that stuff. But again, like each, you know, the, the, the four sweets of the album are all very different, which is on purpose. So the two in the middle, we didn't really play too much of, but again, I'm going to fade us out with another song from the second suite, which is a lot

more just like straight up, more rock and roll, like more upbeat kind of stuff. But yeah, that was a few tracks from laser guided melodies. Dude, give this album a listen, man, and just give it, you know, all the way through. It's really, really worth, you know, a good two, three listens to really appreciate. And I'm going to dive into, you know, he's got, they've got a ton of albums. And I'm kind of curious to see where he goes with it. And, you know, if he really sticks to this kind of sound or if he, if it kind of turns into anything else over time.

Anyways, yeah, so that's that. Keep it short and sweet. Now, Travis, this segue is going to be brutal. Just brutal. You know, a lot of people have a lot of free time right now. You know what free time's good for, brother? A little... I got an idea.

You just turn the lights down a little bit, maybe? Is that what we're talking about? Maybe light a candle or two? Candle? Put on a little berry white. Yep. And, you know, get smooching with your boo. Get smooching with your boo.

Maybe you need a little help in that arena. You know? Maybe you're like, you know what? We got all this free time. Let's fucking spice it up. Let's get some toys. You know? Let's try out something new in the bedroom.

Now's the time. So you know what's even better though, Q? Free stuff. Free stuff for the bedroom. Free stuff is awesome. Free stuff to spice up your bedroom is even better. Even better, my friend. And we're talking about Adam and Eve.com, Q.

That's what we're talking about. Yes. Dude, and you know what? It's just a click away. You don't even have to go to a store. I'm trying to stay indoors. So, Q, we can, you know, if you go there, you can select almost any item, any one item for 50% off. And then Adam and Eve loads on the free stuff. Now, do you think they put the word load in there for a reason, Q? Oh, I hope so, dude. Yeah, I hope so, too. So hop on Adam and Eve.com. Pick out something nice. Throw it in the cart. And if you type in no filler in the promo code,

Adam and Eve will give you 50% off of that item. And they're going to throw in one sexy item for him, a special gift for her, and a third item that you'll both enjoy. And they're going to throw in six free spicy movies to help you get in the mood with your boo. Plus, free shipping, dude. What more do you need? Especially like you said, Q,

right now, what else you're going to do, man? Dude, it's time to spice it up. Yeah. That's promo code no filler at adameneve.com. All right, Q, so we're, you know, it's time for that, the beloved segment.

It is what you heard time. What you heard. I'll let you go first this time, brother. What you've been heardin lately. All right. Q. I'm going to do something out of left field here, okay? But it is, honestly, a album that I've been jamming quite a bit lately. And I don't think jamming is the right word to use. And you'll see why

in just a second. Okay. So, Biosphere, have you heard of them? Or him. I think it's just one person. I feel like I've probably heard a few Biosphere songs in my day. I guess the best way to describe him very similar to Lossel, right? So it's ambient. And he sort of uses, you know, field recordings, that kind of thing. Now, does it have like those kind of clicky? No. Beats, you know what I mean? No, it's more... Ambient? Yeah, it's just straight ambient, but very like, man, I don't know the best way to describe him. But so the guy's name, he is from Norway. No, I know I'm not going to pronounce this right, Q. Jir Jensen.

But he goes by a biosphere. And again, the most, the ambient, just the umbrella of ambient, he falls under that. But mostly it's kind of drone, drone ambient. Okay. Anyway, he put on an album, or he did a soundtrack for this movie called Insomnia. It came out in 1997. So, hey, at least I'm staying in the right decade here. But I don't know if I've mentioned this before.

And I feel like we've really only talked about ambient music on our Lossal episode, really. Anyway, we're just going to play one track of this. I feel like, I mean, I like to listen to this kind of music all the time. But if you like to listen to music that reflects the current situation that you find yourself in, just being a human on the planet right now, this music can kind of give you that sense of, you know, doom and gluing doom. Yeah, impending doom. So anyway, we're going to listen to, this is actually a very beautiful song, actually.

But it's the very second track. It's called Lounge. Yeah, the vocals in that have always, like, stuck with me. Like, I listened to this a long time ago. Who knows when the first time I heard it. But, like, I always hear that particular part. when her vocals come in for the first time in my head and then I'm like oh I got to go back and listen to this record because it's great anyway you may recognize the the guy on the on the cover

there yes he was most recently in the film or the TV show uh Chernobyl on HBO was he in one of the black mirror episodes do you watch all that very possible yeah uh he's not being credited as that. But that's the thing I could have been one of his kids. But yeah, his,

you know, I don't remember his name, but the guy that plays Pennywise in the It reboot is one of, yeah, one of his kids. Oh,

cool. There you go. It's one of those, you know, all of his kids act. Anyway, it's just one of those fans. It's like the,

it's like the freaking, uh, the Jelen halls. Sheen, the Sheens. Yeah, the sheens. They're the fucking Walbergs.

Anyway, um, If you like that kind of stuff, if you like dark ambient music, that's one of those records you can just hit play on. The vocals aren't featured very prominently. I think it's only one or two tracks that have those vocals. The rest of it is more of that just kind of dark, moody ambient music. I personally really enjoy listening to that stuff when I work. Yes, I know it's dark and could be perceived as like depressing and stuff, but I don't know.

I just like it. So anyway, again, that was a ambient artist named Biosphere, and that was his soundtrack for the movie, Insomnia. All right, Q, what you got? All right. So last week on my favorite radio station, K-E-X-P, I feel like they're playing more songs that are kind of tongue-in-cheek about, you know, the COVID-19 situation that we found ourselves in. You guys have been living it for a few weeks longer than most of us have up in Washington. Within the last few days I've heard, don't stand so close to me by the police on there. And I heard this other song by this band called The Falcons of Fine Dining.

Never heard about this band before. It is clearly a group of people that work in the restaurant industry that decided to form a band. So the album's called All You Can Eat. It came out in 2017. Here's some of the songs, song names. Track one, Open Bar, track four, tip pool, ticket time. I heart the hostess. So it's like a joke band.

Yeah, and I know you hate those kind of bands. I know you just can't stand them. I just don't think it's, I don't know. I don't find it. I love it, too. I mean, I understand. I get it. I just, I think Weird Al is.

Don't say, don't you dare say something you're going to regret. I was going to say weird Al is the only one that I've ever really, really listened to, but that's because, you know, it's weird Al. Yeah. But other than that, it's like, you know, it's just not, you know, it's not clever, you know. I love it, man. You're not fucking funny. No, it is clever, dude.

No, okay. Different. Reg and disagree. Clever. All right. Anyways, this song is called Wash Your Hands. and it's clearly a, it's loosely based off of Devo's Whippet. Anyways, let's play a little bit of wash your hands.

I mean, that song has never, never been more timely. Yeah, great, great advice right now. Yeah. Great advice. Yeah, so do you think that they, you know, this is the moment that they've been waiting for for this, you know? Well, like I said, dude, the album is about working at a restaurant, you know what I mean? Sure, sure, sure.

It was humorous hearing that on the radio. I doubt you have actually listened to any of the other songs, right? Oh, I have to listen to a few of them, dude. So do they follow, like, do they sound like a different, like you said, this one kind of nods at Whippet a little bit? Like, do all the songs do that? Yeah, yeah. There's another song on here called Corner, which is, you know, it's something you have to

say when you're working, like you say behind or Corner, if you're coming around the corner. So you don't bump into people with a tray full of food as you're going out of the kitchen or whatever. But yeah, it's very heavy, like heavy rock. So, yeah, I think every, I haven't heard the whole album, but yeah, they borrow from a lot of genres and bands. But yeah, dude, it's just one of those weird all type bands.

Yeah. Anyways, I heard that last week. I feel like, I felt like I had to share it. It's, you know, wash your hands, people. Wash your hands. Keep your distance. Stay inside. And jam out to some tunes.

And jam out to some tunes. to some tunes. And, you know, also Adameneave.com, promo code. If you want to get spicy. All right. So that's it. That's our side track on Spiritualized. And next week, we're going to cover Stone Temple Pilots and their album Purple.

Yes, we are. That's going to be, I'm going to let you handle that one, brother. Yes, that's fine. I'm excited to hear it. I haven't listened to the album all the way through yet. Yeah, you know, it was either their debut or. or this one. And I chose this one because to me, my favorite,

one of my favorite songs from the 90s era is on this record. And that's Interstate Love Song. So I wanted to see what else is on this record that I don't know. Because like we said, we like to talk about the songs that aren't singles, obviously. That's the all premise of the show.

I can't say that I've actually listened to this record all the way through. So I did that a couple days go to prepare for next week's episode and I've got a few good songs to cover here Q. Sweet. I'm excited, man. But yeah. Anyway, that'll be next week and we're just going to continue our leisurely stroll through some iconic 90s bands. And dude, I'm, I'm pumped, man. This is my favorite decade for rock music, I think. Totally. I'm excited to you. All right, man. All right. So, hey, Travis, I know you can find us at no-fielderpodcast.com, but

Where else can you find us in this wide world of webs? Well, Q, we are part of the Pantheon Podcast Network. You can find us there. That's pantheonpodcast.com, where you can follow the main pantheon feed and have access to all the great music podcast content that they have on the feed, which includes our episodes that drop once a week,

as well as many other great podcasts, all devoted to music. Basically, it's just a podcast network devoted to sharing and talking about music. So we are very fortunate to be a part of the Pantheon family. I mean, and what better time than now, you know, we're all just sitting at home. If you're going out, you're probably just going on a leisurely stroll, you know, trying to keep your distance. Hop on the Pantheon podcast network, press play, and just listen to all the great. music podcasts that are in the network or just listen to us dude just go to episode one and we got

hundreds not hundreds we haven't reached 200 yet but we've got over a hundred episodes in our catalog now press play and jam out there's some music with us you got all the time in the world i know you do yeah the funny thing is like if you wanted to um if there is a 90s band that that you are hoping that we talk about, we're not going to talk about them because we already talked about them. I'm talking about Allison Chains. That was our very first episode.

Yeah. It was on dirt? Dude, that was that? That's like one of the only 90s albums that we've covered so far. Yeah, I think so. Right, right. But yeah, I think so.

Go back and listen to episode one. If you do, you're going to hear some Allison Chains. But yeah, it is worth noting that not all of our episodes are on the Pantheon network. If you want our early episodes, you have to follow our show individually. And again, you can just find us on iTunes. You can find us anywhere you find your podcasts. But yeah, if you want it to see our show notes for each episode,

go to knowfillerpodcast.com and we list out track lists and any sources that we pull information from, like articles, interviews. Sometimes we'll post videos if it was a video interview that we watched. But yeah, anyway, that's that. So yeah, next week we will talk about Stone Tipa Pilots 1994 record Purple. And that'll do it for us this week. Yes. So again, I'm going to fade out with the song that kicks off the second of the four suites on spiritualized laser guided melodies. This song is called Run. So thank you, as always, for listening.

Everyone, please stay safe, keep you distance, wash your hands. My name's Quentin. My name is Travis. Y'all take care. 92% of households that start the year with Peloton are still active a year later. 92% because of a bike? Not just bikes. We also make treadmills and roars.

Oh, let me guess for elite athletes only, right? Nope. It doesn't matter if you're an average. it exerciser or new to working out. Peloton can help you achieve your fitness goals. 92% stick with it. So can you. Try Peloton bikes, tread or row risk-free with a 30-day home trial.

New members only. Not available in remote locations. See additional terms at onepellaton.com slash home-dash trial.