April 23rd, 2009
Interview: Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember (Spectrum/Spacemen 3)
Dormant for a number of years, Spectrum — the engrossing, transportive British space-rock/psychedelic outfit led by Pete “Sonic Boom” Kember, a founding member of the revered and somewhat like-minded ’80s band Spacemen 3 — returns to the U.S. for a tour that kicks off tonight at Kung Fu Necktie. Kember started Spectrum two decades ago while Spacemen 3 was still active, but after the personal and professional relationship between he and co-founder Jason Pierce (who went on to form Spiritualized) disintegrated, Kember turned Spectrum into a full-time affair, soon after also forming the concurrent project Experimental Audio Research (E.A.R.). While the guitar-centric Spectrum was a relatively conventional and more accessible band (i.e. a fair amount of structure and melody), Kember’s work with E.A.R. (which also featured My Bloody Valentine’s Kevin Shields for a little while) — plus releases under his Sonic Boom moniker and a number of one-off collaborations — has been decidedly more experimental, abstract, and challenging. While he still continues to pursue that sound and vision, and in recent years has played live with Stereolab and Yo La Tengo, Kember has finally reactivated Spectrum for the new EP War Sucks and this 13-date American tour. We caught up with the quite friendly, good-natured Kember over the phone yesterday while he took a smoke break from Spectrum’s rehearsals up in Brooklyn:
How are you?
All right, man. Yeah, good.
When did you get into the States?
Two days ago. Needed a couple of days to acclimatize.
So you’re starting the tour here in Philly…was there a particular reason?
Uhhh [laughs] …no! We’re based around New York for the next week or so, doing shows in New York City, Brooklyn, Philly, Boston, Baltimore…so, y’know, it’s just the way the scheduling worked out. But it’ll be great to be in Philly, I have some good friends there.
When was the last time you played here?
Mmm, maybe a couple of years. Yeah, a couple of years.
Any specific memories of or feelings about Philadelphia?
Yeahhh, I mean, right from the early ‘90s I’ve always stayed with the Bardo Pond guys and yeah, I’ve always had really good shows there. I have several memories of Philly — I’d never seen cheese come in a can before. So yeah…I also had a really weird show there, I think at Upstairs at Nick’s — we turned up to do our soundcheck and it was before Christmas, it was in December, and the local DEA department were having their Christmas party there. And of course they were meant to be out of there by two and we turned up before two for the soundcheck, and because they were cops of course they were all still drinkin’, so I remember playing “A Pox on You” to them at full volume to clear them out of there. They weren’t very amused.
Hah — when was that?
That’s about…that woulda been ’97. Yeah……One of my guitars is from Philly, a DiPinto – it’s a really, really cool guitar. I travel with that all the time, so I always have a little bit of Philly in my life.
So this show at Kung Fu Necktie — pretty much any material from your career is fair game?
Yeah, yeah, the set is more fitted to go with a band. For the solo shows I did a much more mellow set of songs, which were much more suited for that sort of delivery. So for this we’re doing, y’know, Spacemen, Spectrum stuff, more intricate numbers.
Tell me about the new EP — I saw there’s a Laurie Anderson song on there…
Yeah, Laurie Anderson’s “Walking & Falling,” which I do in my solo set, although now it segues into another track with the full band called “Over and Over.” And then of course there’s “War Sucks,” which is the A side, and that’s a reworking of the Red Crayola song. We’d been doin’ it in the live set for a while but we kinda got it worked out, sorted out, to record it.
I’ve heard some people say it’s been kinda tough to follow your career because you’ve had so many different bands and projects and collaborations and things…
Ahhh…yeah, I mean, well, for 10 years, to be honest, from ’97 to a couple years ago, there wasn’t much demand to do the Spectrum stuff, so I wasn’t gonna carry my ass around just for the sake of it. I guess there’s been a real buildup of younger kids really into that music, and into the old Spacemen stuff, but it was kinda cool having 10 years pretty much where I was just playing with Stereolab, playing with other bands, doing E.A.R. stuff, which I really love – it’s a real different thing. Some people like both, some people prefer the song-based stuff, and fair enough – I understand they’re different things, even though I also know there’s a hell of a lot in common with it. The precepts behind it, that’s pretty much the same…my whole career has been based around the same precepts of things being based upon drone and repetition and stuff. It’s amazing how much variation you can create using quite simple concepts. But yeah, I’d be the first to understand that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. In fact, I’ve long gone out of my way to make sure that I’ve disenfranchised certain sections of the audience who might actually just be coming along because there’s a couple of pretty songs I wrote on an album. I think My Bloody Valentine run on a pretty similar theory, y’know, with the piece they do at the end of their sets. It sorta sorts out their audience a little bit.
Oh yeah, that long noise thing they do. I saw them way back when, and they did that, and some people were getting kinda pissed off.
Yeah [laughs]. Reading reviews of shows that they did that were absolutely amazing, some people really didn’t like it and it was that last bit that they focused on. Which is strange, there’s such depth in what they do. But I think sometimes you need a song like “Suicide” to make sure it’s not easy going.
So why did you decide to go back to doing Spectrum-style material?
Well, y’know, even in that period of not doing song-based stuff for 10 years, I didn’t stop writing songs, I just stockpiled stuff. And, of course, when you have that long to digest songs, you usually end up with…you can’t remember the shit ones, but the good ones stay in your mind, so I ended up with some pretty good stuff. I’m kinda lucky in that I’m self-assured in some ways that my music, if it’s not timeless, it at least doesn’t sound of its time, certainly when it comes out…I mean, like Spacemen, at the time, people didn’t think that…people were like, “What the fuck are these fuckers on?! Oh, right, we know what they’re on…” But yeah, they really didn’t get it, or they didn’t like it, or both.
Did that upset you at all at the time?
Oh no, I loved it! We felt in a way…I mean, this was in the middle of Thatcher’s reign, and, you know, the whole “Just say noooo,” all that fucking bullshit going on, and it needed other people on whatever level they could manage it just to be doing different stuff and not sorta blindly reiterating some shit phrases or lifestyle.
You definitely seem like someone who’s always followed your own muse, regardless of what anyone else might think.
Yeah, yeah I do. But I certainly care what other people think. It’s meant to be popular music. We’ve got the “music” part of that down — we’re just working on the “popular” bit at the moment.
Spectrum plays Kung Fu Necktie tonight at 8pm. $10.
