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With the shoegazing revival starting to pick up the pace at last, what with this year already seeing the arrival of enticing albums from the likes of Stars, Joy Zipper, Phillip Eno and Schizo Fun Addict - it seems that the latest name to add to the list are The Spectacle Experiment. A New York based three piece, built primarily around the sonic talents of mainman Hadrian Mordecai, The Spectacle Experiment do things with layered guitar sounds and synths that will make your eyeballs melt and your brain bleed.
Debut album JUST IN TIME FOR NOTHING is an initially angry sounding proto goth experience, the first two songs in particular exploding into waves of industrial guitar noise and seething goth darkness. When Hadrian Mordecai screams out the words "you just threw me away/superficial bitch" over the kind of musical backdrop to give Robert Smith nightmares on THROWN AWAY, you kind of get the impression he's not just come away from the happiest relationship ever. The opening track ONE MORE DAY finds itself stumbling into similar territory, despite its slowly burning build up that comes on like a close relative to Snow Patrols indie anthem Run.
This is a record that sounds more at home with the gentler side of things though, the acoustic strums of LAST THING YOU'LL HEAR FROM ME allowing Mordecai to settle into a more naturalistic state, softly singing his heart out over the strains of an acoustic guitar and weird sonic experimentation - sounding for all intents and purposes like the glorious coming together of Ride, Drop Nineteens and early Teenage Fanclub. ABOVE THE FALL finds a similar gentle groove, subtle little guitar riffs working their spidery magic over a delicious bass line, things gradually building to the dropping of subdued beats that come like morning raindrops on a misty windowpane. Pushing the sonic experiments to the next level, FREE NIGHTS sparkles with enough wanton guitar meandering to make Sonic Youth drool, Hadrian Mordecai emerging as the kind of leftfield guitar abuser to hold up alongside the likes of Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Kevin Shields and Stuart Braithwaite.
HOLDING ON is a psychedelic swirl of dreamlike proportions, gentle little piano chords peering from beneath swirls of dense guitar drones, Hadrian Mordecai acting as the sonic conductor to an orchestra of his own making and imagination. The closing NEVER THOUGHT, finds some peace and resolution at the end of the journey - a calming and gentle effort that finds pretty vocal melodies laid atop chiming guitar work and sublime piano chords.
JUST IN TIME FOR NOTHING is a record that's both boldly ambitious and gently disarming, sweet little pop songs sitting alongside sweeping drone-rock epics and the odd spiteful goth-rock barrage thrown in for good measure. Hadrian Mordecai creates the kind of swirling psychedelic soundscapes that put him alongside people like Kevin Shields and Lee Ranaldo, building huge walls of blistering white noise from a combination of effects pedals and boundless imagination. An enticing and ambitious debut album, JUST IN TIME FOR NOTHING presents The Spectacle Experiment as an exhilarating new prospect, dreampop, shoegazing, post-rock - call it what you like, but this is a band you need in your life.

A mysterious apartment fire, cause still unknown.
A young man obsessed with music says goodbye to his keyboards, demos and a record collection dating back to adolescence. Instead of a curse, he takes this as a liberating omen. Coming from the industrial/goth nexus of synth-based rock, the new indie initiate abandons the past and commits to his new instrument, a semi-hollowbody electric guitar.
He immerses himself in walls of sound, white noise drone, and psychedelic fuzz swirls. Late at night, he builds a laboratory at home. Road trips to back-ass music shops in far off places like Tanis, New Hampshire, Felton, PA and Phillipsburg, NJ following leads to rare effects pedals, no name analog echo chambers from the 60's, lo-fi Radio Shack reverb with RCA plugs. He combines the old with the new, maxing credit cards on digital processors, then spends night and day surfing the possibility of sound.
Finally, he emerges from his pirate lab with a self released debut album, JUST IN TIME FOR NOTHING (another way of saying TOO LATE). A unique concept recording honoring shoegazers and feedback merchants like The Jesus And Mary Chain, Slowdive and Sonic Youth, a tribute to sonic astronauts everywhere.
JUST IN TIME FOR NOTHING, not the final creation imagined by our hero, guitar scientist Hadrian Mordecai, simply an introduction by way of the past to the futuristic aural experiment incubating within his mind. The Aquarian said, "superficial bitches beware, this boy is a deadly sharp cookie for real, and if this be 'shoegazer' fodder, then let that electro-energy surround me baby." Amplifier warned, "Mordecai paints sound collages with the artsy nocturnal aura most closely associated with Pink Floyd, My Bloody Valentine and Spiritualized...The Spectacle Experiment display the ability to wreak sonic pandemonium."
The Spectacle Experiment, now a full band featuring JUST IN TIME FOR NOTHING hyperactive drummer Scott Wilson and his lovely wife Mary Ann on bass making love to the rhythm, framing Hadrian's dreamy soundscapes with thump and fury. They are playing regularly in the NYC area and preparing the next instalment of the scientist's sonic prophecy. Coming to a galaxy near you.

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