The Psychedelic Ubik

Everyone who hears this record says the same thing "This is fantastic! Why haven't I heard it before?!" It's definitely an unexpected treat if you're a follower of the careers of the ex-members of Spacemen 3. Sterling Roswell (SR) was their long-standing drummer and played on several albums including their breakthrough Perfect Prescription. But he's a bit of a mystery and I don't think he ever let his photo - or even his name - appear on their record covers. He quit in 1988. All the ex-members went on to do really good projects. The albums SR went on to make while in Darkside, with Spacemen's Pete Bain, are very good, but PSYCHEDELIC UBIK is on a different astral plain. He calls it THE NEW PSYCHEDELIC UNDERGROUND. In some ways it's old school; in others its futuristic space rock. Sometimes there's lovely woody double bass thumping away, there's understated 60s style beats. But it's melded so well with electric guitars (sort of twangy surf style) and swooshing, throbbing synths that it sounds like a whole new thing he's invented. It's lazy, it's absorbing. It reaches deep inside you. His songwriting is masterful. They're heartbreakingly romantic, or their so obviously instant pop classics that they could be classified as soul, britpop, garage, country or rock and you wonder if they weren't written years ago, in another dimension, and have been seeping through and guiding us ever since. It really GELS; it's a very well crafted and mature piece of work. One of the tracks is even backwards - and its one of my favourites!

There are several rumours circulating regarding SR's present circumstances. This is what I heard:

(1) He quit England after he finished making the PSYCHEDELIC UBIK to join a voodoo tribe in his native Africa. That's why he's never on TOP OF THE POPS; (2) Sterling Roswell is in a maximum security mental hospital in the USA for killing and eating his entire band including bass player TOMMY DOYLE who, apparently, used to play in The Plastic Ono Band; (3) He fell in love with his guitarist, O. D. Loveless and - in an attempt to woo him - had a sex change so that he could look exactly like Poison Ivy from THE CRAMPS, who Loveless was infatuated with. I don't know how it worked out.

Weird, eh? Not sure about that second one, but he did grow up in Africa, according to his website, so maybe he went back, like in Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan.

Ouija Boy, September 2005