SIANSPHERIC at the Horseshoe, June 12. Tickets: free. Attendance: 150. Rating: NNN
progress, clearly, is overrated.Three years after their last full-length album and the interpersonal meltdown that came with it, space rock quartet Sianspheric have resurfaced, still droning and gleefully staring at their shoes.
At Tuesday’s Horseshoe release party for the group’s new The Sound Of The Colour Of The Sun disc, there were no house beats, no ill-advised forays into techno, not even a vague attempt to update Sian’s sound, and in the end their stubbornness served them well.
With frontman Sean Ramsay snarling out a sarcastic dedication to AWOL ex-bassist Steve Peruzzi and welcoming Union Jack-wearing guitarist Paul Sinclair back into the fold, the quartet reeled out sheets of sound at trouser-flapping volume. There were delicate songs and massive melodies lurking within the furious pedal-stomping, but for the most part Sianspheric’s 45-minute set was about sonic density.
Songs moved slowly, if at all, and the white noise manipulation made it seem like 1992 all over again. The sheer weight of the set was remarkable, but the most impressive moments came when drummer Matt Durrant and bassist Locksley Taylor stepped up and heaved the rhythm forward.
As the slo-mo head-nodding in the crowd confirmed, Sian have a dub rhythm section waiting to explode. Forward the bass!
