All Things Shining:
(Flying Saucer Attack Unearths the Holy Grail
of Home Recording or Confessions of a Lo-Fi Junkie)

I've been recording homemade multi-track music since I was 12. My first multi-track homebrew effort was bound to happen: I first used a jam box to record myself singing and playing the Fun Machine. (For those not in the know, the Fun Machine is this whacked-out ‘70s incarnation of a keyboard/synthesizer that my dad bought my mom for some then ridiculous sum.) Next, I took a second jam box, pressed record, and then blasted my original recording from the first jam box while simultaneously playing coat-hanger-drumsticks and singing harmony. The results mesmerized me. Particularly impressive were the parts I could hear above the tape hiss. Since then, I've acquired some additional technology, including an analog 4-track, a digital sampler, and Pro Tools recording software for ye olde Macintosh.

Yet despite my new and improved gadgetry, my home recording efforts still don't sound like Thriller. The discrepancy is not surprising, since professional studio equipment is quite pricey. One microphone alone can cost thousands of dollars. I myself own two microphones. I'm pretty proud of my SM58 mic, which cost over $100! My other mic is this Radio-Shack-looking thing that is currently held together with prodigious amounts of duct tape. Sometimes when I'm strapped for equipment, I'll even use my headphones as microphones. (Yep, it works.) I've spent years trying to milk professional quality audio out of my cheap home recording equipment – all to no avail.

So recently, I've modified my home recording approach. I now admit the limitations of my technology; I accept its hisses and glitches; and I try to glean all the beauty I can from within the confines of this unavoidably lo-fi medium. To me, home recording has become like Bonsai tree pruning or haiku poetry writing. It opens up a miniature, minimalized world where I can pursue the Holy Grail of abstract musical beauty on my own terms. I've caught glimpses of that shimmering Home Recording Grail, but it always seems to lie just one more effects pedal beyond my grasp. In moments of despair, I'm tempted to dismiss my quest for home recording beauty as an ill-guided, quixotic farce. But then Flying Saucer Attack lands in my life, shining hope and light on my darkening path. Viva La Lo-Fi!

YES, HE CAN BE TAUGHT

I'd heard about Flying Saucer Attack long before I'd ever heard any of their music: "Dude, if you're into home recording, you've got to check out Pavement, Guided by Voices, Daniel Johnston, Michelle Shocked; and oh yeah, there's this other band called Flying Saucer Attack." One by one I worked my way through this list of homebrew artists, but none of them had found The Grail. (At most, some had stumbled upon a mere grail-shaped beacon.) Most home recording bands spend all their energy vainly trying to overcome the lo-fi barrier rather than creatively embracing it. Either that, or they just plain suck. But FSA (Flying Saucer Attack, get it?) doesn't sound like a poorly recorded rock band, nor do they succumb to the earnest yet boring folk singer approach. Instead, they make layered, shimmering, multi-track music; and it's all home-brewed. FSA is the real deal, proving that artistic greatness on lo-fi equipment is not only plausible, it's even marginally marketable.

THE MUSIC

Flying Saucer Attack is primarily one guy from Bristol, England, named Dave Pearce. A few other homebrew musicians grace FSA with bongos, clarinet, vocals, and drums. Everything else is just Dave and his guitars, which can sound like almost anything, and frequently do. Pearce doesn't take guitar solos.

Indeed, single guitar tracks are rarely distinguishable, except for the occasional acoustic guitar strum. Instead, everything swirls together. Rather than trying to forge crisp, vivid, radio-friendly hits, Pearce instead paints washed-out, dream-pop music, turning the inherent blurriness of home recording devices from a bug into a feature, bending in the wind so as not to break.

In a phrase, Flying Saucer Attack makes "Lo-Fi British Post-Shoegazer Ambient Fuzz Pop." But their ambience is like no studio ambience you've ever heard, and their fuzz is like no studio fuzz you've ever heard. It's not just the instruments and amplifiers that are fuzzing and hissing, it's the whole animal -- microphones, cords, recording devices, tapes, et al. Ironically, all these analog anomalies are then digitized and preserved on CD's, high fidelity snapshots of a low fidelity blur, like performing taxidermy on road kill so it can forever hang on your wall.

But this is no ordinary road kill. The beauty of their tunes makes FSA more than just another lo-fi noise band. In the midst of this off-planet sea of sound, melodies and harmonies of enchanting pop reverie lurk and breathe and have their being. Who knows what the lyrics are? Pearce himself admits that the lyrics are just an excuse on which to hang the vocal melodies. The vocals, like the guitars, become yet one more strand in an undulating, shimmering weave – human voice as instrument. Interspersed between the pop tunes are instrumental pieces that seem more suitable to the band's name, songs that could be from the soundtrack of 2001: A Space Odyssey if they weren't so darned distorted.

All of FSA's music is dynamic. It changes drastically depending on your stereo equipment. The music literally changes. I don't enjoy FSA in my car because the engine noise accentuates the music's omnipresent fuzziness, and it all winds up sounding like something your grandmother would call "that noise." Playing FSA on your home stereo at low volume generates a similar version of "that noise." For best results, crank up the volume at home so that the melody lines and the shimmering guitar work can balance out and swim amongst the ambient hiss. Headphones are a definite plus. I can't fathom why this lo-fi music is so enhanced by hi-fi filters, but it is. Maybe it has something to do with the value of .

Home-brewed though it is, FSA's music is far from dinky. If anything, studio polish would only diminish Flying Saucer Attack's impact. In art, there are inadvertent rough edges that indicate shoddiness and lack, and there are intentional rough edges that indicate well-conceived meaning. FSA's rough edges indicate unabashed beauty shimmering inexplicably in the heart of what you thought was mere chaos. It puts me in mind of a Verve lyric:

You're too afraid to touch.
Too afraid you'll like it too much.
The lows, the highs are breaking up your mind.
Can't you hear? There's beauty in life.

1. Flying Saucer Attack

Their first, self-titled CD is more pop and less ambient, more fuzzy and less floating. There are fewer instrumental songs. For beautiful tune lovers who can stomach the crunch, start here.
Here's a sample: My Dreaming Hill | Silent Tide, A | Moonset | Wish

Acoustic-guitar-based with less drums, Further is not my favorite, but I can see why it might be yours. It's not folk music, but it is more rhythmic and less hissy. A good place for the timid to ease in.
Here's a sample: Rainstorm Blues | In The Light of Time | Come and Close My Eyes | For Silence

This compilation of singles is my current favorite. Since it wasn't conceived as a whole, there's more variety. Very ambient, haunting, evocative, you know the drill. I'd start here, but I'm me.
Here's a sample: Oceans | Instrumental Wish | Standing Stone | Crystal Shade

Chorus is yet another compilation, this one derived from separate multi-song sessions rather than from individual singles. More instrumental weirdness, less pop rock. It gets on out there.
Here's a sample: Feedback Song | Light In The Evening | Popol Vuh III | Always

Their most recent effort, New Lands is the only FSA CD that is actually rhythm based. Rhythm Nation it ain't; but the drums, however crude, do give this album a bit more bop than its predecessors. I prefer the older floating stuff myself, but these tunes are very catchy nonetheless. And of course, all instrumental explorations remain willfully intact.
Here's a sample: Past | Present | Up In Her Eyes | Respect

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