One Album Wonders: Sonic Boom's Spectrum

For this edition of One Album Wonders we take a listen to Sonic Boom, who released one album, Spectrum, in 1989.

Sonic Boom is Peter Kember, an English musician born in Rugby in 1965. In 1982, whilst at Rugby Art College, he co-founded The Spacemen (later Spacemen 3) with Jason Pierce. After releasing two albums -- 1986's Sound Of Confusion and 1987's The Perfect Prescription -- Kember signed a deal withSilvertone Records for a solo album. On the resulting album, Spectrum, Kember's professed influences such as Suicide, The Velvet Underground, The Stooges, and early electronic music were all on display.

Kember and Pierce reconvened as Spacemen 3 and produced two more albums -- 1989's Playing with Fire and 1991's Recurring -- before splitting acrimoniously. Pierce went on to form Spiritualized, whose music was used to sell Volkswagens. Kember went on to record both as Spectrum and E.A.R. (Experimental Audio Research) -- and both of which blur the lines somewhat between solo efforts and collaborations -- sometimes with pioneering electronic genius Delia Derbyshire. 

Spectrum released four albums in the 1990s and E.A.R. have, to date, released eleven albums but as Sonic Boom remains a one album wonder. In 2012, Spectrum was released on vinyl in 2012 by Spain’s ViNiLiSSSiMO. It was also re-released on aluminum the same year by Space Age Recordings.

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Eric Brightwell is an adventurer, writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities. He is not interested in writing advertorials, clickbait, listicles, or other 21st century variations of spam. Brightwell’s written work has appeared in Amoeblog, diaCRITICS, and KCET Departures. His work has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store, Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Brightwell has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, LAist, Eastsider LA, Boing Boing, Los Angeles, I’m Yours, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA? and at Emerson College. Art prints of his maps are available from 1650 Gallery and on other products from Cal31. He is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

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One album wonders: Blue Phantom's Distortions

BLUE PHANTOM'S DISTORTIONS (1971)

During the Album Era (mid 1960s-mid 2000s), the LP was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption. Some bands recorded just one album during their time and, whether popular or not, they are the so-called one album wonders. 

 

 

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Blue Phantom were an instrumental group (or project) who released one album, Distortions, in 1972. Although instrumental, there's something about the sound that undeniably speaks to the fact that it's the work of Italians. Maybe it's the slightly swing and gentle funkiness paired with dark, creepy atmosphere that reminds me both of Goblin's work and Ennio Morricone's score for The Exorcist II (both of which Blue Phantom pre-dated) but that Blue Phantom were Italian is almost all that is known about them. 

Blue Phantom were most likely not a band in the normal sense. Rather they were probably a group of musicians assembled by violinist, conductor, and composer, Armando Sciascia. Armando MichalarosSciascia was born 16 June, 1920 in Lanciano, Italy. He graduated from the Conservatorio di Pesaro and afterward moved to Milan where he played with the orchestras of the Teatro Nuovo and Pomeriggi Musicali.

He formed his own orchestra who in 1952 (as Armando Sciascia e La Sua Orchestra) released the 10" "Poema"b/w "Non Vedo Che Te" on Fonit. In 1953, on 10" split with Orquesta Malatesta, Sciascia and company (asOrquesta De Conciertos Sciascia) released four songs through the Telefunken label. Sciascia began composing film scores for documentaries in the 1960s with 1961's Tropico di notte and the 1962's Mondo caldo di notte and Sexy.


In 1962 Sciascia formed the label Vedette, which was home to Equipe 84, Gian Pieretti, and Pooh -- all of form whom Sciascia composed employing the noms de disques "H. Tical" for music and "Pantros" for lyrics. Sciascia continued composing film scores until 1966, when his last score proved to be for the film 3 colpi di Winchester per Ringo. Vedette, meanwhile, expanded into a series of imprints devoted to various genres and including Albatros, Ars Nova, Fox, I Dischi Dello Zodiaco, JAM Record, Musiche Per Sonorizzazioni E Programmi, Phase 6 Super Stereo, Pineapple Records, Quadrifoglio, Quadrifoglio International, andSpider Records.

  
UK (left) and French (right) versions of Blue Phantom's Distortions

Blue Phantom's only album was released in 1971 on Spider, which had been created the year for a Sciascia-credited library music record, Impressions In Rhythm & Sound. Distortions, though credited to Blue Phantom, sounds to me like a work by the same anonymous musicians who worked on Impressions In Rhythm & Sound. Distortions was released in France with new art on Sonimage as Distortions Pop. It was released in the UK on Kaleidoscope in 1972, again with (strange) new artwork (by an artist listed as Alan Lester) and bizarre new age word salad liner notes seemingly written by someone with limited grasp of English:

"Distortions on a theme of music and life. To outline our sleeve the artist has traced his ideas on the evolution of life through the all seeing eye. From life before birth? Through conception evolution construction resurrection and destruction: in all a total experience. The music as the titles indicate is an evolution of the avente [sic] garde. Here is a fine example of modern composition sent into orbit by Blue Phantom. The music is indicative of various states of the human mind and could well be described as an audio experience."

The "audio experience" is of the heavy psych/proto-prog variety. There are echoes of bandsHawkwind, Pink Floyd, The Stooges, and most explicitly, Black Sabbath. Distortions found its wat into the hands of French porn director Gérard Kikoïne, who added several of the album's songs to Spanish porn director Jesús Franco's film, Le journal intime d'une nymphomane (the direction of which was credited to "Clifford Brown").

After a collaboration with Francesco Anselmo titled Notturno, Sciascia went on to record several albums of classical music done in a pop style including (as the Armando Sciascia Orchestra), La musica più bella del mondo (Music I love), Nostalgia, Largo e Appassionato (both 1972), and the film scores cover album, Hot film themes (1974). In the 1980s Sciascia retired from music and in 1988 moved to Connecticut, where he continues to live to this day.

In 2008 Blue Phantom's sole release was rereleased on vinyl by Italian prog reissue label, AMS, with an extra track included as a bonus. In 2012 it was released on compact disc by Kismet (also with the extra track). If you like your acid rock brown, look for a copy!

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Eric Brightwell is a writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities; however, job offers must pay more than slave wages as he would rather write for pleasure than for peanuts. Brightwell’s written work has appeared in Amoeblog, diaCRITICS, and KCET Departures. His work has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store,Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Art prints of his maps are available from 1650 Gallery and on other products from Cal31. Brightwell has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA? and at Emerson College. He is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

One album wonders: The United States of America's The United States of America

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA - THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (recorded 1967, released 1968)

During the Album Era (mid 1960s-mid 2000s), the LP was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption. Some bands recorded just one album during their time and, whether popular or not, they are the so-called one album wonders. 

 

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The focus of this edition of one album wonders is United States of America, a band formed and led byJoseph Byrd for a couple of years in the late 1960s. Their sole album, United States of America, only reached 181 on the Billboard charts after its released but has in the years since achieved well-deserved cult status. 

Byrd was a composer born in Louisville, Kentucky and raised in Tucson, Arizona. In Arizona he’d played in various pop, country, and jazz ensembles before moving to California to attend Stanford University. At Stanford he metavant-garde composer La Monte Young. After relocating to New York, La Monte Young and Yoko Ono curated a series of performances, the Chambers Street loft concerts, which featured pieces by Henry Flynt, Jackson Mac Low, and Byrd -- part of the embryonic art scene which would eventually emerge as the Fluxus movement.

In 1963, Byrd began a relationship with Dorothy Moskowitz and the two relocated to Los Angeles where at UCLA Byrd co-founded the New Music Workshop with Don Ellis, Craig Woodson, and others. Four years later, in 1967, Byrd recruited Moskowitz (the two had by then separated) to sing in a band he'd formed with Woodson (on percussion), called United States of America. Other early members included Michael Agnello and Stu Brotman (bassist in Canned Heat and Kaleidoscope). The band were later joined by Gordon Marron (electric violin and ring modulator), and Rand Forbes (bass).

In December, 1967 the United States of America recorded what was to be their sole album, an eponymous concept album. Some reviews have suggested that there was nothing else like the United States of America at the time, which overstates their experimentalism and gives the impression that the band were something other than what they really where, which was a top psychedelic band with heavy use of electronics. The results aren't entirely dissimilar to those of bands like Fifty Foot Hose, The Fugs,Jefferson Airplane, The Red Crayola, and Silver Apples.

Lead track "The American Metaphysical Circus," for example, emerges from a cacophonous collage of circus music into something from the same corner of the universe as The Monkees' "Porpoise Song (Theme from Head)." "Hard Coming Love," released as the album's single, is acid rock, albeit acid rock which prominently features violin and electronics. At other times the album sounds like a more left field Left Banke or The Beatles' "A Day in the Life." In other words, one foot is solidly on pop ground -- which is by no means a slight, but rather a counter to the narrative offered by some less charitable reviewers that the band's music is "just noise," which is far from true.

The recording of the album included contributions from Ed Bogas on keyboards, who signed on as a full-time member when the band toured the East Coast. In 1968, another single single “The Garden of Earthly Delights” b/w “Love Song For The Dead Ché” was only released in Europe. The band's tour was apparently plagued with difficulties. The early synthesizers could be described as temperamental and three members were arrested in Orange County for possession of marijuana before a performance, which left Byrd and Moskowitz alone to perform on the concert. After the tour the band members went their separate ways.

Byrd formed Joe Byrd & the Field Hippies (who were incidentally another one-album wonder), and went on to release two solo albums in the mid-1970s, A Christmas Yet to Come and Yankee Transcendoodle. He also scored several films (Agnès Varda's Lions Love, Bruce Clark's 1971 The Ski Bum, and and Robert Altman's H.E.A.L.T.H) and taught music courses at several colleges. Moskowitz (later Moskowitz-Falarski) performed with Country Joe McDonald's All-Star Band and later taught music in the San Francisco Bay area. Marron worked as a Los Angeles studio musician and later moved Hawaii. Woodson too has taught music and performed with the Kronos Quartet. Forbes pursued work in computers. Rogas composed music for several animated works, most infamously (with Ray Shanklin), Fritz the Cat. Since 1992, The United States of America has been issued and re-issued on compact disc several times and in 2008, on hi-def vinyl by Sundazed.

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Eric Brightwell is a writer, rambler, explorer, cartographer, and guerrilla gardener who is always seeking writing, speaking, traveling, and art opportunities; however, job offers must pay more than slave wages as he would rather write for pleasure than for peanuts. Brightwell’s written work has appeared in Amoeblog, diaCRITICS, and KCET Departures. His work has been featured by the American Institute of Architects, the Architecture & Design Museum, the Craft & Folk Art Museum, Form Follows Function, Los Angeles County Store,Skid Row Housing Trust, and 1650 Gallery. Art prints of his maps are available from 1650 Gallery and on other products from Cal31. Brightwell has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Magazine, and on Notebook on Cities and Culture. He has been a guest speaker on KCRW‘s Which Way, LA? and at Emerson College. He is currently writing a book about Los Angeles and you can follow him on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.