Sianspheric
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- The title of this article should be "SIANspheric", but is titled "Sianspheric" due to technical restrictions.
Sianspheric (variantly known as SIANspheric4, or sometimes SIANspheric; "sian" is a Hindi word meaning "intelligent" or "bright," and it is a common surname in places where Hindi is spoken) is an ambient/shoegazer band from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. They formed in 1994, and signed with the then-fledgling record label Sonic Unyon. The following year, Somniun, Sianspheric's debut album, was released to little public notice, although years later when music critics noticed it, it became something of a genre classic. As a result, the band has been favourably compared to Slowdive, Boards of Canada and Godspeed You Black Emperor; a rather unlikely combination. Sianspheric gigged relentlessly, mostly in Canada, through most of the late 1990s and early 2000s until they decided to break up.
In Toronto in 2005, they reformed, and put out a new single, the 7" vinyl I Wouldn't Expect You To Understand on the Black Mountain Music imprint. They followed this up with a DVD+CD release entitled RGB, released on Sonic Unyon. The DVD contained live footage of the band recorded between 1997 and 2001, music videos, short films based on or featuring the band's music, and the CD featured Dolby 5.1 surround sound remastered versions of their often twenty-plus minute ambient, sonic explorations, some of their fan-favourite songs (also remastered), demo versions of some album tracks and one previously unreleased song, the curiously titled "D'Yer Wanna Be P. Kember?" Given the band's sense of humour and altered perceptions due to psychedelic drug use, it may be a distortion of the 1980s Dr. Pepper drink slogan "Wouldn't you like to be a pepper too?"
The band has also worked with Toshack Highway on a split album entitled Magnetic Morning/Aspirin Age. A CD with ten tracks, Toshack Highway contributed the first five tracks, and Sianspheric handled the remaining tracks. The final product was released in 2003 by Sonic Unyon. "It's not two full albums, more two separate EPs, and the packaging and art handles it all with sly wit," quipped Adam Franklin of Toshack Highway. "More split releases should be like this."[1]
As of 2006, Sianspheric is Sean Ramsay (guitars, vocals), Jay Patterson (bass guitar), Locksley Taylor (additional guitars, backing vocals) and Matthew Durrant (drums). All four members contribute to the programming/sampling that their ambient escapades consist of. In June 2006, the band announced that a new album was being worked on, though its release date and title has not yet been determined. The band's website and MySpace pages (links below) are frequently updated by the band members themselves.
[edit] Discography
- Somnium — 1995, Sonic Unyon, CD
- There's Always Someplace You'd Rather Be — 1998, Sonic Unyon, CD
- Else — 1999, Sonic Unyon, CD
- The Sound of The Colour of The Sun — 2001, Sonic Unyon, CD
- Magnetic Morning/Aspirin Age — 2003, split album with Toshack Highway, Sonic Unyon, CD
- I Wouldn't Expect You To Understand — 2006, Black Mountain Records[2], 7" white vinyl which was limited to 300 copies
- RGB — 2006, Sonic Unyon/Inchroma Multimedia, DVD+CD
An album is in production in late 2006, which is to be titled either Writing The Future in Letters of Fire or The Ethereal Melodies of the Lazerpipe Arkestra — release date, record label, and media format are as yet unannounced.
