Bristol-based Flying Saucer Attack were an anomaly when they emerged during the Britpop era. Were they shoegazers? Post-rock pioneers? Instrumentals 2015 is Flying Saucer Attack’s first album in 15 years, and it can only enhance their mystique. David Pearce, now the group’s sole member, has stripped away not only the vocals from his 90s sound, but pretty much everything else apart from his guitar, which is multitracked and treated with distortions and delays. These are sombre pieces, almost medieval in their austerity. On Instrumental 5 – the tracks have numbers rather than conventional song titles – Pearce’s guitar sounds like a church organ. It is followed by an onslaught of feedback on the mercifully brief Instrumental 6. Elsewhere, we have spacey echoes in the vein of the Durutti Column (Instrumental 3) and a lovely Eno-like ebb and flow (on Instrumental 9). Repetitive melodies are built around drones that sound as though they’re from the English folk tradition, though there is no trace of acoustic instrumentation.
