On January 28Th 1986 I was home from school sick with a fever. My family had just moved to depressing suburban New Hampshire from depressing urban Massachusetts, specifically Lawrence a city that excelled in car theft, arson and welfare scams in he 1980s. After using my best “I’m sick” voice to negotiate the day off I burrowed back into cartooned sheets only to wake up to an explosion on my television. Whipped into consciousness, my haze gave way to shock, I remembered that I was supposed to be in school celebrating space travel, watching the shuttle launch live. One of New Hampshire’s own, Christa McAuliffe a grade school teacher, was to be sent into space along with the Challenger crew. We were going to watch the launch, talk about space travel, eat dried ice cream and then be really hyper. Instead I was at home tripping on a fever wondering what the fuck an O Ring was and how this could happen.
There’s no doubt I was really jealous of Christa, I wanted it to be my teacher or specifically me, I was way more into space travel. Remember how cool that was as a kid, you hated Russians and thought space shuttles and specifically anti-gravity was the hottest shit. You’d obviously do something way cooler than some stiff teacher in space, you could drink Coke that was suspended in the air and do all sorts of cool flips and shit, not look at rocks and measure things or whatever. Regardless 1986 was packed with unexpected disappointments for a lad Living Free or Dying from the Challenger disaster to the Red Sox collapsing in the World Series and my now useless Berry the Bears shirt. These little life lessons mixed with a few yeas of Catholic School have had me looking over my shoulder my whole life for that variable that is going to fuck me up. O Rings, routine grounders, wild pitches, hail marys by a dude with a stuffy nose, a chick with a wandering eye, code enforcement, sketchy friends, it’s a robust list of paranoia.
On 4.29.08 Burning Star Core releases Challenger on Plastic Records (LP) and Hospital Productions (CD). Challenger is robust with psychedelic drones and hypnotic layers that loop, resonate, cut and swirl. It’s lucid ambiance that spins maudlin circles around you then unexpectedly jolts you back into consciousness. Burning Star Core is one of the weapons in C.Spencer Yeh’s quiver that he uses to punch holes in conventional music, creating new spaces and voids simultaneously. His deep catalog of improvisation and structured performance has put him along side Double Leopards, Comets on Fire, John Olson, Hair Police, Thurston Moore and other noisey notables. Drone, avant-electronics, improv and many splinter factions and tags often remove our most familiar friend the vocal chords. Our ears have to connect to the space created by the absence. Wanton post-rockers take the safe route by noodling away in “sad” keys, rarely achieving more than a rock song sans vocals lacking any direction while avant structures that drone, slash or lay ambient often lack the familiarity or reference new ears crave to stay tuned. The washes of sound and silence of Challenger give enough clues to keep you stuck and invested while Mr.Yeh orchestrates the arrival of the unnoticed variable, the inevitable sharp turn laced in sparsely rich psychedelic sound. Challenger is a perfect introduction and a brilliant companion to a rich resume of sound.
LP for the vinyl heads on Plastic Records
CD for the digital sect on Hospital Productions
Visit C.Spencer Yeh here
Preview Beauty Hunter from Challenger above and here.
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