Spacemen 3

The Perfect Prescription (1987)

A record structured like a night out followed by the comedown, it swings between loud, fuzzy songs and hushed, acoustic ones. "Walkin' with Jesus" and "Come Down Easy" show the band's trick of one repeating figure and slowly shifting tremolo. It remains the clearest account of how drone could be made gentle as well as heavy.

Sleeve notes

The Perfect Prescription · 1987

Spacemen 3 formed in Rugby, England in 1982 around two friends, Peter Kember (Sonic Boom) and Jason Pierce. They played long, hypnotic songs built from one or two chords, repeated until they hit a trance, with fuzz guitar, tremolo and a lot of volume. Their models were the Velvet Underground, the Stooges and Suicide, and they used the stage as a place to play the music rather than perform it.

Their records made the idea quieter and stranger. The Perfect Prescription (1987) is laid out like a single comedown, from big fuzzy songs to hushed, gentle ones, and Playing with Fire (1989) went further into slow, wide-open psychedelia. The two writers fell out and the band split in 1991, Kember going on to Spectrum and Pierce to Spiritualized. Their drone-and-tremolo sound became a reference point for the bands that followed, Ride and Low among them.