Since it’s Halloween week, and I always associate Orson Wells’ War of the Worlds broadcast with the holiday, it seemed like a decent time for posting proper on some Simply Saucer. Though their name sounds like an item you might pick up at your nearby intergalactic grocery stop, their astral psychedelic garage transmissions more than make up for poor title decisions (I mean, their quintessential album is titled Cyborgs Revisited… Ridley Scott, you own them some royalties, dudebro).
The influences are obvious – early Floyd, 13th Floor Elevators, the Velvets’ “Sister Ray,” Delay 68 Can, Electric Prunes, et al., but whereas those groups fine-tuned their sound and still maintained a compositionally tight feel despite their freewheeling image, Simply Saucer had no interest in aesthetic. Every song sounds as if it was recorded live with cheap tape recorders. Its gorgeously raw sound and low-end clipping mix gives Simply Saucer extra (possibly unintended) atmosphere. It’s too bad that Simply Saucer was never known too far outside their native Ontario, as they really captured, at least in my mind’s eye, the archetypal ’60s/early ’70s psych movement from a candid, outsider perspective. Being removed from what was happening in England and the West Coast is totally an asset to Cyborgs Revisited. Continue reading ‘Revisiting Simply Saucer’s Cyborgs Revisited’
