A groundbreaking collaboration between British experimental artist Pete Kember aka Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3) and Swiss electronic duo SINNER DC, MAPS blends music, visuals, and interactive gaming (Mac/PC) into a multidimensional experience.

Originally conceived for a one off live performances in 2013 in Geneva, MAPS draws inspiration from Borges' meditations on the limits of representation, crafting a surreal auditory and visual journey.

TRACK LISTING

A1 Alpha And Omega 8.26
A2 All Show & No Go 07:26
A3 Ask For The Moon 05:00
B1 All Eyes And Ears 08:24
B2 All Rolled Into One 10:44
B3 Alpha And Omega (Reprise) 02:23

A festive collection of winter songs (originally by Purple Mountains, Willie Nelson, John Lennon & Yoko Ono, Merle Haggard and more) by Indie supergroup consisting of Dean Wareham (Galaxie 500, Luna), Britta Phillips (Luna), and Pete Kember aka Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3, Spectrum, E.A.R.).

In a season where we all seek comfort, tradition, and a return to a home of sorts, a trio composed of indie music’s foundational members have gifted us A Peace of Us—an album of diverse holiday tunes filtered through their musical imaginations. Dean & Britta, well-known from their work defining a genre with Galaxie 500 and Luna, join Spacemen 3’s Sonic Boom, another bastion of indie’s collective adolescence, to bring to life a collection that draws from early ‘60s pop, garage, country, James Bond soundtracks, Christmas carols, and electronica. Dean Wareham recalls a sentiment from his DJ friend Chris: “You can experience all the emotions of Christmas through music: love and hate, joy and heartache, nostalgia, regret, anticipation, and frustration.”

Their venture into a holiday album was organic, spurred by a few cover tunes over the years, a Christmas special during the pandemic, and finally collaborative sessions between Dean & Britta in L.A. and Sonic Boom in Portugal. The trio all contributed vocals, with guitars by Wareham, bass and keyboards by Phillips, effects, and mixes by Sonic. The result is an album of exploration as well as comfort, “like Bing Crosby...on acid,” Britta adds, the tracklist a reminder that the holidays are complex and tragicomic.

As is often the case with holiday merriment, the album has a soft undertone of the bittersweet. Wareham sings one of David Berman’s final songs, “Snow is Falling in Manhattan,” one Dean believes is “destined to be a holiday classic.” Its lyrics foreshadow Berman’s tragic death: “Songs build little rooms in time / and housed within the song's design / is the ghost the host has left behind.”

The Christmas blues surface again with Willie Nelson’s “Pretty Paper,” rendered here as a duet between Britta and Sonic Boom, their pulsing synth-heavy production updating the song for a darkened nightclub rather than a bright honky tonk. This collection steers clear of the usual Christmas chestnuts, but fans of classic indie haze may find a new favorite in “Peace on Earth / Little Drummer Boy” (created for Bing Crosby and David Bowie’s 1977 TV duet). Wareham notes that “Our favorite version is the German one by Marlene Dietrich, so that was our jumping-off point.” All three sing this one together: Wareham’s tenor, then Sonic Boom’s thrumming baritone, and finally Phillips’ soothing contralto making the plea for peace.

If collaboration is the fuel, peace and mutual understanding is surely the fire, and A Peace of Us has us gathered around it. “Christmas is mostly for children anyway,” says Dean. Sonic adds, “Or the inner child in all of us. Goodwill to all men. Hopes and fears for the year to come. And light in the darkness. Where this festival began.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Sonic Boom joins Dean & Britta of Luna for an album of perfectly weird covers of christmas classics. It reminds me a little of the slowcore christmas joy of Low's 'Christmas', but with few more blips of pretty, otherworldly electronics. Lovely stuff.

TRACK LISTING

Side A:
1. Snow Is Falling In Manhattan
2. Pretty Paper
3. Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown?
4. Old Toy Trains
5. Snow
6. Silver Snowflakes
7. Stille Nacht

Side B:
8. You're All I Want For Christmas
9. Christmas Can't Be Far Away
10. He's Coming Home
11. Little Altar Boy
12. If We Make It Through December
13. Peace On Earth / Little Drummer Boy
14. Happy Xmas (War Is Over)

Yeah x 3 - Sonic Boom and Panda Bear Reset Remix & Instrumental Remix:
Two masters of modern day psychedelia fire the original into outer space to create a head spinning, foot stomping analogue space walk of a track.

Yeah x 3 - The Vendetta Suite:
On the Reason to Live mix, Belfast’s Balearic producer The Vendetta Suite turns back time and turns Yeah x 3 into a brilliantly shimmering ’80s pop anthem from an alternate universe.
Elsewhere, the Reason to Drift version is a gorgeous beatless ambient track that sounds like first light through stained glass windows.

TRACK LISTING

A1/ Yeah X 3 - Sonic Boom & Panda Bear Reset Remix
A2/ Yeah X 3 - Sonic Boom & Panda Bear Reset Instrumental
B1/ Yeah X 3 - The Vendetta Suite Reason To Drift Mix
B2/ Yeah X 3 - The Vendetta Suite Reason To Live Mix

Panda Bear & Sonic Boom, the duo of Noah Lennox and Peter Kember, release Reset in Dub, a dub version of their acclaimed 2022 LP Reset, featuring reworkings of all nine tracks by the legendary British dub producer Adrian Sherwood, via Domino. Sherwood created his version of Reset at his On-U Sound Studios with a crew that included such storied musicians as Doug Wimbish and Skip McDonald of the Sugarhill Gang and Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, as well as Prisoner, Alex White, Horseman, Mark Bandola, “Crucial” Tony, Ras Badthings, Ivan “Celloman” Hussey, and Mathew Smythe. “One of the primary influences on Reset was Jamaican rocksteady and it seemed like an interesting idea to explore taking it back to that sort of tropical root,” says Kember.

“I like big empty spaces; I like malls when there's no one there and the beach in the wintertime - visually it’s simple and uncluttered and the noise of the surf drowns out everything else, so I suppose it's no surprise I've always liked the sound of dub,” says Lennox, “and though some stuff bears its mark more than others I'd wager you can find residues of it in everything I've done. As a fan of Adrian’s I was excited when Pete suggested we ask him to do some dubs of Reset tracks, but as they started to come through it was clear what he was working on was much more than a dub. Reset in Dub feels like the thing filtered through a prism and it recontextualizes the OG.”

“This is a complete reset of Reset from myself and the On-U Sound crew,” says Sherwood. “Being a fan of Animal Collective and Spacemen 3, when it was suggested we do this together I loved the idea and relished the challenge. We talked about influences, old records, mixing techniques and made a plan, which was to keep all the elements of trippy fun, but with added menace, groove and an ultra active mix for the ‘heads.’ Very happy and proud of the result.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: A brilliant flipside to PB & SB's already superb Reset album. You just know a suite of dubs put together by the great Adrian Sherwood is going to be a great time, and with such stallar source material it's no surprise that it's turned out this well. Rich, cosmic dubby madness.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2023 EXCLUSIVE, LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

A brand-new John Massoni LP that was produced by his good friend, Grammy nominated producer, Hunter Lea. This is another John Massoni and Pete Kember, aka Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3, EAR, Spectrum) collaboration. It will have one side completely mixed by Sonic Boom. Featuring the excellent track ìGreat Godís Giftî this will be pressed in heavy weight 180g solid mustard coloured vinyl.

Although Panda Bear and Sonic Boom are no strangers to each other’s music, Reset marks their first collaborative release. When SB pitched an idea to take their working relationship to the next level, he reckoned PB might reject the proposition outright—in the nine gloriously, feverishly hook-bound tracks of Reset, though, you can hear exactly how much he loved the prospect.

SB’s notion was simple enough: After lugging his records to Portugal years ago, his fascination was renewed by old favorites and standards he had not heard in years. Something struck him, the way the ornate intros by Eddie Cochran or the Everly Brothers felt largely like stage curtains, compelling in their own right even if they had very little to do with the hits that followed. SB began crafting loops from these preambles, twisting and bending the parts like scrap metal before sending them onto PB.

The kernel of Reset emerged not long after international lockdowns began. If making it supplied temporary medicine for the duo, it is now permanently so for the rest of us, a reminder that sometimes playing and singing along to old favorites with friends can be enough to make the world feel a bit better.

STAFF COMMENTS

Darryl says: Noah Lennox AKA Panda Bear and Pete Kember AKA Sonic Boom are longtime collaborators so it seemed only a matter of time before they’d team up together on an album. Reset is a 60s concept record built around intros to rock’n’roll 45s, before being reshaped with harmony overloads, repetitive loops, and psychedelic heavy samples. A perfect sonic melding of their previous bands, Animal Collective and Spacemen 3.

TRACK LISTING

1. Gettin’ To The Point
2. Go On
3. Everyday
4. Edge Of The Edge
5. In My Body
6. Whirlpool
7. Danger
8. Livin’ In The After
9. Everything’s Been Leading To This

Pye Corner Audio releases an EP of remixes by Spacemen 3 legend Sonic Boom. Let’s Remerge! takes three tracks from the recent album Let’s Emerge! – which went to Number One in the Official Charts’ dance chart following its release in July – and gives them all appropriately weird and wonderful twists. ‘Haze Loops’ gets turned inside out, the smoke clearing to reveal some new shoots; Andy Bell’s guitar is brought to the fore on ‘Saturation Point’, keeping things together as the rest of the track spins out of control in the background, like a cross between Khruangbin and Ennio Morricone; previous single ‘Warmth Of The Sun’ is put through an acid blender, blurring all the edges and giving us one much-needed final hit of serotonin as the summer recedes into the distance.

“When Nat from Sonic Cathedral said we should ask Sonic Boom for a remix, I thought he was kidding, but as a huge Spacemen 3 fan I felt we should give it a shot,” says Pye Corner Audio, aka Martin Jenkins. “Happily, he ended up remixing three tracks and I couldn’t have been more pleased with the results. He really took them somewhere special.” “Friends kept mentioning Pye Corner Audio. Friends with good taste. And when I listened, I could hear why,” says Sonic Boom, aka Pete Kember, who has just released Reset, his acclaimed collaboration with Panda Bear. “When Sonic Cathedral approached me about a remix, with Andy Bell in tow to boot, I asked for the stems of the three tracks that I liked the most… and sometimes in life things just flow. “Three tracks and three remixes later, here we are, finally sending them off into the world to do their thing and for us to float and oscillate into their textures. These songs were medicine during troubled times for me. I can’t think of a better endorsement.” Praise for Let’s Emerge! “It was an amazing thing to realise that people connected so positively with Let’s Emerge!” says Martin, “as it was such a personal record to make.”

STAFF COMMENTS

Barry says: Sonic Boom takes his deft hand to three of the highlights from Pye Corner Audio's superb 'Let's Emerge' LP (my personal LP of the year), and twists them into psychedelic versions of the originals. In keeping with the originals, but taken in entirely new directions, it's a brilliant outing from Kember, and a wonderful addition to the considerable PCA canon.

TRACK LISTING

A1. Haze Loops (Sonic Boom Remix)
A2. Saturation Point (Sonic Boom Remix)
B1. Warmth Of The Sun (Sonic Boom Remix)

The latest Sonic Boom album, remixed by the man himself – Pete Kember.

Contains Two Tracks (Tick Tock / Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough) In Remixed Form That Were Not Originally On The UK Album. 

To Sonic Boom’s Pete Kember, re-imagining the past can lead to ways forward on life’s natural, interconnected path. In April of 2020, he released his first album in over 20 years called All Things Being Equal, a lush and psychedelic record full of interwoven synthesizers and droning vocal melodies, concerned with the state of humanity and the natural world. An entire year later, Kember has re-imagined his last release and created an album of self-remixed tracks called Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough, inspired by the spirit of late 70s, early 80s records by artists like Kraftwerk, Blondie and Eddy Grant. His new album is hypnotic and moody, holding onto the existential framework of the original, but exposes a fresh, beating realm of possibility.

In his last album, All Things Being Equal, Kember told regenerative stories backwards and forwards as he explored dichotomies zen and fearsome, reverential of his analog toolkit and protective of the plants and trees that support our lives. His work is always complex, both in its instrumentation built using modular synthesizers, and with his attempts to observe the many variables that exist in the universe that are intrinsically connected. Kember takes his existential and musical curiosity even further in Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough, explaining “how we interact now is especially critical.” Written while the world endures many environmental and human crises, the album is both a balm and a reminder to nurture our own relationships, both natural and personal.

Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough includes remixes of six tracks from All Things Being Equaland two tracks previously released exclusively in Japan. The album opens just like the original, with “Just Imagine”in its remixed form. The modular synthesizer at its foundation sounds familiar, but as the song progresses it branches out into various veins of sparkling embellishments and deep humming to truly expand the world that the song attempts to envision. On the albums’title track “Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough,” Kember’s instrumentation mirrors the interactions he wishes to inspire; synthesizers responding and building on one another, a conversation of sorts that the human world currently seems to avoid.

Almost Nothing Is Nearly Enough sets itself up to be a grooving, night-time record, while carrying on Sonic Boom’s sense of urgency to assess our relationship with the world. As Sonic Boom revisits his last album, he exposes the arteries and bones of his past work and shares its raw, exciting potential. The result is a re-textured and re-colored new set of songs, emphasizing Sonic Boom’s ability to make a sonically expansive album feel distinctly impactful for anyone who listens closely.

THIS IS A RECORD STORE DAY 2020 RELEASE AVAILABLE ONLINE ONLY AS PART OF THE AUGUST 29TH DROP DAY AT 6PM.
LIMITED TO ONE PER PERSON.

Not previously released on vinyl Originally recorded in Seattle, in 2000 and released on CD only later the same year 'The Sundowner Sessions' is a recording featuring John Massoni (electronics) and Sonic Boom (custom human voice synthesizer). "[Sonic} can make something out of almost anything.He'd just pick out a tape of mine (I have a bunch of tapes with sound and drone experiments), and work something into a piece.His focus and ability not to be undermined by the limits surrounding him is really amazing to watch.We worked well into the night - thus 'The Sundowner Sessions' were born." - John Massoni. Never before released on vinyl but now re-mastered by John Rivers at Woodbine Street Studio especially for vinyl release for RSD 2020.

It’s auspicious that Sonic Boom—the solo project of Peter Kember (Spectrum, Spacemen 3)—returns in 2020 with its first new LP in three decades. Kember’s drawn to the year’s numerological potency, and this intentionality shines into every corner of All Things Being Equal. It’s a meditative, mathematical record concerned with the interconnectedness of memory, space, consumerism, consciousness—everything. Through regenerative stories told backwards and forwards, Kember explores dichotomies zen and fearsome, reverential of his analog toolkit and protective of the plants and trees that support our lives.

Sonic Boom’s second album and first for Carpark began in 2015 as electronic jams. The original sketches of electronic patterns, sequenced out of modular synths, were so appealing that Stereolab’s Tim Gane encouraged Kember to release them instrumentally. “I nearly did,” confesses Kember, “but the vibe in them was so strong that I couldn't resist trying to ice the cake.” Three years later, a move to Portugal saw him dusting off the backing tracks, adding vocals inspired by Sam Cooke, The Sandpipers, and the Everly Brothers (which he admits “don’t go far from the turntable pile”), as well as speculative, ominous spoken word segments. His new home Sintra’s parks and gardens provided a different visual context for Kember’s thoughtful observations, and he thematically incorporated sunshine and nature as well as global protests into the ten resulting tracks. “Music made in sterility sounds sterile,” he says, “And that is my idea of hell.”

Over the vivid, calculating arps of opener “Just Imagine,” Kember nudges listeners to do as the title suggests. It’s based on a story he read about a boy who healed his cancer by picturing himself as a storm cloud, raining out his illness. “The Way That You Live,” a rollicking drone powered by drum machine rattles and bright chord beds, morphs political distrust into a revolutionary mantra about ethical living. “I try and live my life by voting every day with what I do and how I do it, who I do it with and the love that I can give them along the way,” offers Kember.

An unusually curated gear list accompanies each song, unexpected layers reinforcing the monophonic skeletons. Mystery soundscapes and grinding sweeps were teased from EMS synths, synonymous with and evocative of ‘60s BBC scoring and ‘70s Eno. Pacing basslines oscillating into warbling heartbeats came from a cheap ‘80s Yamaha. A modern OP-1 generated subtle kicks and eerie theremins, while his toy Music Modem—an unused holdover from sessions Kember produced for Beach House and MGMT—finally found its recorded home.

It’s rare to see liner notes where synthesizers rather than humans are credited (other than guest vocal stints from “co-conspirators

TRACK LISTING

1. Just Imagine
2. Just A Little Piece Of Me
3. Things Like This (A Little Bit Deeper)
4. Spinning Coins And Wishing On Clovers
5. My Echo, My Shadow And Me
6. On A Summer's Day
7. The Way That You Live
8. Tawkin Tekno
9. I Can See Light Bend
10. I Feel A Change Coming On

Few artists loom larger in the garage-rock legend than THE SONICS. With raunchy, cult classics such as “SHOT DOWN” and “HE’S WAITIN” off their 1966 album, BOOM, the pioneering band staked their claim on rock ‘n roll, putting the Pacific Northwest scene on the map and cementing their place as heroes for future generations. Those that followed include Danny Lee Blackwell’s NIGHT BEATS, a group with its own underground origins as well as a direct, fuzz and feedback-coated link between the impact of THE SONICS and their own potent sound. It’s this connection that led NIGHT BEATS to record BOOM in its entirety, a proper homage to their musical forbearers. Blackwell, along with an arsenal of ace musicians manage to maintain the spirit of original recordings like “CINDERELLA,” “DON’T YOU JUST KNOW IT,” and a particularly unhinged version of “LOUIE LOUIE,” while injecting their own brand of earth-quakin’ soul-shakin, maximum R&B. Blackwell takes the lead on vocals and guitar, interpreting Gerry Rosalie’s mean scream with ease. Mike Brandon holds things down on drums as his partner in crime, bass genius Nate Ryan, while Julien O’neill grooves things up on keys and Joe Santa Maria wails on the horns. Finishing touches come from Marlon Rabenreither on acoustic guitar, plus Cole Alexander and Dan Gerbang on backing vocals—all working together to keep THE SONICS’ legacy intact, even as they tear the whole place down. Next time you hear a loud boom and your windows rattle, it’s probably a sonic boom alright; but on the other hand, it might just be “THE SONICS BOOM.”