Dallas Orbiter - Spaceman Things (self-released)

The job of the music reviewer, one of them at least, is to unpick the sonic strands of a song, album, or band and try to relay to you, dear reader, exactly what is going on. With some artists, it is easy; many still toe very clear-cut musical lines that can be summed up in a quick sound bite or catch-all phrase. But they are not the interesting ones to write about. The interesting ones are those whose sonic strands are both so eclectically sourced, so broad and brilliant and so tightly woven that it is hard to get an easy grasp on them. Dallas Orbiter is just such a band.

Spaceman Things is such an interesting and exciting album precisely because the musical ball of wool the band uses to weave its delicious design is so deftly wound that you really have to get right inside the music to see what is going on.

With a name like Spaceman Things, you would expect things to lean into a space jam – cosmic rock sort of vibe, and indeed it does, but, as is always the case, what they add to this basic mix, this launching pad, that makes things really interesting.

The opener, “Into Position,” is a snarling blend of angular alt-rock and spacious breakdowns, muscle and melody, smooth guitar lines, and more challenging and charging musical blends. “Radiate Atcha’s” relentless, robotic drive shows their love of all things krautrock, an updated take on that motorik, industrial groove with the edges softened occasionally, and only slightly, by shimmering electronica.

“Forth, Gen!” shows the band’s love of more free-form musicality, a Miles Davis creative footprint made with a post-punk sonic boot. It takes in cascades of piano and incendiary guitars, intense, walls of sound balancing just enough breathing space, and “Blue Skies, White Chrome” shows a more shimmering, shoegaze-infused direction.

It is easy to throw all manner of tags at a band like Dallas Orbiter – psychedelic, progressive, mathy, soundscaping, spacey, retro, and so on – but these are just cliched soundbites. The only way to understand what is happening here is to climb inside the music and explore things at an atomic level. Do that, and the true wonders of the music prove to be both revealed and rewarding.

Other bands may be pushing through the same sonic pastures as Dallas Orbiter, but I sincerely doubt it.

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