"Last I heard from starfleet command, the new Man or Astro-Man album, Experiment Zero, is to be released on April 16, 1996 A.D. By clicking on the astronaut you can warp to my official Experiment Zero Countdown Page. Thank me later."--Surflyer's Astro Site
It says something about Man or Astro-Man that, of the seven fan pages listed on the band's official website, three of them no longer exist, and three of them haven't updated since 1996. There's a reason for this. The band released the pinnacle album of their career, Experiment Zero, that year. After that, it seemed to become more about the packaging than the actual music contained within. Star Crunch left the band, as did Dr. Delecto, who was replaced by Dexter X, who has also since departed.
Realizing that their members were as interchangeable as Duplo bricks, the remaining members of Man or Astro-Man launched their Clone Project Alpha Phase One Tour. The concept was to send out three "clone" bands on separate tours to play the band's music for them. While this gesture would be completely ineffective for any other band, Man or Astro-Man understood that it didn't take a genius to replicate their instrumental surf-rock sound verbatim.
Over the next few years, Man or Astro-Man released 1997's forgettable Made from Technetium and 1999's utterly disposable EEVIAC: Operational Index & Reference Guide. Of course, that hasn't stopped them from releasing another. No, they're not letting their nine other seemingly identical full-lengths slow them down. They won't be undersold! But, hey, if nothing else, you have to give them credit for keeping at it. How many other surf-styled instrumental bands have lasted eight years?
With two original members (Coco the Electronic Monkey Wizard, Birdstuff) and two surrogate guitarists (Trace Reading, Blazar the Probe Handler) intact, Man or Astro-Man advanced to the nearest studio to record A Spectrum of Infinite Scale. Rarely has there been an album so seemingly mistitled; the spectrum of this band's sound has, until now, had all the range of a casually tossed sheet of paper.
But something's changed here. Though the band still sticks faithfully to their trademark sci-fi surf gimmick, they've omitted the annoying science film samples, and actually show, for the first time in years, traces of creativity. A Spectrum of Infinite Scale integrates abrupt time changes, sudden halts, and actual memorable melodies. In fact, the mutation is so dramatic that it's safe to say no one has ever made surf-rock like this in the history of music. Granted, it's still surf-rock, but now it comes with unexpected twists and turns, and moments of genuine inspiration.
When A Spectrum of Infinite Scale opens with a crescendoing electronic gong and a woofer-shattering snare/cymbal combo, followed by a synthesized orchestra submerged in reverb and a mammoth drum sound-- all underscored by subtle, menacing effects-- it's immediately apparent that this is anything but the same record they've made a million times since 1993. The band's new incorporation of faux-ambient electronic textures suggest they've grown tired of their scratchy Ventures LPs and now search for new territory to conquer. And considering the sheer sonic wallop this album packs, they've found it in post-punk instrumental ensembles like Trans Am and Pittsburgh rockers Don Caballero.
Even their song titles reflect a hazy image of Don Cab, with such numbers as "Curious Constructs of Stem-Like Devices Which Now Prepare Themselves to Be Thought of as Fingers," "Many Pieces of Large Fuzzy Mammals Gathered Together at a Rave and Schmoozing with a Brick," and the possibly cocaine-inspired title, "Multi-Variational Stimuli of Sub-Turgid Foci Covering Cross Evaluate Techniques for Cognitive Analysis of Hypersignificant Graph Peaks Following Those Intersubjective Modules Having Biodegradable Seepage."
Particularly of note is "Within One Universe There are Millions," easily one of the best tracks of the band's repertoire. In just under three minutes, it achieves Astro-perfection with head-scrambling feedback, a dizzying stop/start introduction, a killer chord progression, and Macintosh vocals. The squelching "Spectrograph Reading of the Varying Phantom Frequencies of Chronic, Incurable Tinnitus" barrels out of even the tiniest speakers like a discharged bullet. And "A Simple Text File" is the song you knew the future would eventually produce-- an ASCII text file written as music for a dot-matrix printer. Naturally, the sound of an ancient Apple Imagewriter II in action doesn't exactly make for a symphonic masterpiece, but the amount of time that went into making this decrepit device sing, and Albini's beautiful mic job are, at the very least, commendable.
Of course, in the end, this is still surf-rock, albeit a very unusual hybrid. But it's nice to know that after all this time, Man or Astro-Man are finally trying to sound original and, perhaps most surprisingly of all, succeeding.
