Soundscapes and Sonic Booms

By Julene McCoy in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 4, 2007 1:53PM

Tonight is the night for atmospheric music to haunt your ears at the Lakeshore Theater while you stare at your feet and contemplate how there’s no place for us in this fucked up world. We’ve been getting schooled on this type of music over the last couple of years by our boyfriend and the show tonight features one of the big guys of the genre - Sonic Boom a.k.a. Pete Kember. Kember was one part of Spaceman 3 which eventually split and became Sonic Boom and Spiritualized.

Spaceman 3 and The Jesus & Mary Chain were two Brit bands that defined the beginning of the shoegazer scene as we know it today, but each took that seminal sound to different ends of the spectrum. S3 pretty much summed themselves up with the 90s collection Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs To. Spaceman 3 was known for simple droning notes that when added up created texture and emotion. Kember has always been interested in the sonic punch of sound and how it makes one’s body feel – think of the beat of the marching band drum pulsating in your stomach as it passes by or the sound of an every day noise becoming symphonic – the leaf blower mixing with the mower to create an urban soundscape.

That pro-drug stance got Spaceman 3 into the same old problems that end so many other bands – drug use and egos. Hence Sonic Boom is doing his own stuff now. So don’t be surprised if the crowd or the performers seem a little like they’re in a trance – it may just be their chemical helpers, or they truly are spacing out to some space rock.

Sonic Boom headlines and local followers of the drone-rock scene, Dreamend open.

Lakeshore Theater, Wednesday, April 4, 9:00 p.m., $10

Image via NASA. Credit: Ensign John Gay, USS Constellation, US Navy