Fujirockers: The official fansite of the Fuji Rock Festival

Cleansing spirits with the aid of a guitar in Osaka 2004

I don’t know if this is the same for everyone but there have been certain songs which I have heard during my life which have completely changed the way I listed to appreciate music from that point on. My college years pretty much laid the foundations for the kind of music I still listen to today and there is one song by Spiritualized that perhaps more than any other, opened my mind to a universe of sonic experience which I had never known before. The name of the song was “Shine a Light”, from Spritualized’s debut album Lazer Guided Melodies. That piece of music was so life altering for me that I have included it for you all to listen to at the end of this post. Spiritualized came into being after Jason Pierce decided to start the band after splitting with Peter Kember and ending one of the most adventurous units of the 80’s, Spacemen 3. These Spacemen used unheard of psychedelic sounds along with vast amounts of distortion, and one of their album titles gives you a very succinct idea of why they were so ground breaking: Taking Drugs to Make Music to Take Drugs to. Kember continued his career delving deeper into the world of space and electronics with his astonishing work as Spectrum and Sonic Boom, whereas Pierce decided to form a new band in 1990 with what I consider to be one of the best names of all time.

Spiritualized’s music has always been very much about drugs, with much of the lyrical content, album art and auditory construction seeming to evolve out of a place which does not exist in normal consciousness, in a word, a very spiritual arena of human existence. It is much more than just chemicals, however, that fuels the genius of Mr. Pierce, and in many of his songs (especially on the album Amazing Grace), he sings about god and being helped by higher powers. At other times the feeling, impact and majesty of the music as well as the lyrics makes you feel like he is telling you something that Nietzsche might have. Despite all the pain you suffer and that god might not be there to save you, there is still love to be found, and you need to somehow embrace that despair, let it wash over you and do your best to transcend whatever darkness may be in your life. That is my interpretation of what he is trying to say when I listen to Spiritualized’s music and that is certainly the feeling that I got when I felt my spirit somehow levitating out of my body when I witnessed their super human live show around 10 years ago at Shinjuku’s legendary Liquid Room. Spiritualized released their 7^th album in Sweet Heart Sweet Light in April this year, and with so much material to choose from, and a genre-less repertoire that includes influences from blues, space rock, ambient, gospel, psychedelic to noise, their performance at Fuji Rock promises to be one of the most spiritually uplifting of the festival. Do yourself a favor and listen to “Shine a Light.”

*Photo of Spiritualized live in Osaka by yellow egg and used with the permission of Smashing Mag