"Stanislaus County" lies in the central valley of California, tucked between Stockton and Fresno. There are reasons that (in all likelihood) you and I have never heard its name pronounced before. Of course, I could be wrong. Sometimes I am wrong. Somewhere in Stanislaus County is a city called "Oakdale" whose residents pride themselves on living in the "Cowboy Capital of the World." As near as I can tell from internet-skimming, Oakdale is best known for its agriculture, a soon-to-be-closed Hershey's factory, its loamy, fertile soil, and for several instances of toxic contamination in the groundwater/aquifers. The combination gets me, I've got to say. That said, I am interested in and discovered Oakdale for a completely different reason.
In the mid-1990's, two unrelated and underrated post-grunge bands, Hum and Failure, released two mind-blowing space-rock albums. In 1995, Hum released the concept album "You'd Prefer an Astronaut," and the following year Failure released the heroin-drenched "Fantastic Planet," the darker of the two. Aurally, both albums represent almost everything that the mid-90's grunge scene should have been--the bands use distortion not only to create epic sonic tapestries, but also to build walls and layers of emotions. A complete and perfect sense of loneliness and the anguish of being lost and isolated in a vacuum, or, really, distant space, pervades both bands' work, but simultaneously, a piercing sense of protection, familiarity and home peeks out through riffs and phrases.
Though to the best of my knowledge the two bands had nothing to do with each other save for sharing a genre, I group them together because the two of them created two perfect dystopic futures that could be understood without any context but the records themselves. In the same way that TRON and Blade Runner are meticulous visions of a future that could only be envisioned through the lens of the 1980's, "Fantastic Planet" and "You'd Prefer an Astronaut" could only ever be seen through the 1990's; As the synthesizers of New Wave and 80's films' background music were a quiet contemporary proclamation that the future is "now," the two bands acknowledged that the distortion-laden and pedal-mutated sounds of alternative rock could convey futuristic sound-scapes just as well as they could convey an angst-ridden "fuck you!" attitude.
Hum released their last album "Downward is Heavenward" in 1998, which felt less like a lonely space album than "You'd Prefer an Astronaut," and more like they had landed somewhere completely new and had a few years to get familiar with it, which we as listeners will also need to get familiar with the album.
There are reasons that neither band really "made it," and problems beyond just lacking "accessibility" that stopped them from garnering the underground following they both so genuinely deserve, but I am no speaker for the dead, so I will not delve into any flaws that they may or may not have had, but I will explain what I can.
Failure broke up shortly after the release of "Fantastic Planet," which was supposed to be their masterwork, because the 68 minute supernova of heart-swallowing syrupy hopelessness didn't sell well to greater earth. I suppose they were crushed and felt like they had nowhere to go but down, which may or may not be true. It's a brilliant and fascinating album in every way that I have already explained, but the culmination of all that gushing lies in its fourteenth track, "Another Space Song," which among the most perfect, perfectly written, and perfectly produced songs ever recorded--that sentence does it no justice. That song is not worth describing because it is evocative and eloquent enough to explain itself and a number of other experiences much better than anyone should ever try to.
Hum literally could not exist outside of the 1990's. Their final concert took place on New Years' Eve, 2000. After that, they ceased to exist. It was a fair decision--outside of the 1990's, they would cease to be completely transcendent. Confined to the context of a lost and confused decade that already was but written for a lost and confused decade yet to be, they will sound increasingly pertinent and beautiful as time keeps lapsing.
I had sort of assumed that like Hum, literal "space" rock bands had almost completely died along with the last decade. I was wrong. One or two computers ago, it came to my attention that I didn't have "Another Space Song" on file. Struck with an earworm and a dire craving, I downloaded absolutely every file my search returned, just in case the others fell through. A few months later, I noticed "Pleasant Valley Aerospace--Another Space Song.mp3" in my downloads folder. I wondered what kind of band would cover Failure, and how anyone could possibly go about trying to recreate that song. I've heard that no one should ever attempt to cover a song unless they plan to make it completely different than the original, or inarguably better than the original--this cover is neither of those things but, as I realized as soon as I had started the file and it was wafting through my speaker-holes, these guys know what they're doing. The arrangement was clearly thought out in the most active possible way, then filtered through layers of incredibly deliberate and intricate effects. Most importantly, it sounds
really, really cool.
This file became this huge enigma, for me-- I wanted to know everything about it, and about this band, Pleasant Valley Aerospace, but the only real, concrete information I manage to glean about the band is that it has two members, Chris Amato, and Jamie Jeness, who used to be in a band called Sinewave. The band cites Failure as an influence, but their songs sound more like what Hum might have written to follow "Downward is Heavenward," which ties all three bands together chronologically and links them in as the third part of the same idea of futures. Their semi-tongue in cheek description seems a lot more believable than anything they have to say for themselves about recordings or concerts Ironically enough, it does the band more justice and explains their existence more clearly:
"Towards the edge of creation you head. Your destination is the answer to the question of universal entropy. Will the truth you seek really matter or will it void you of purpose? Strapped into this cocoon of light and machinery these thoughts fill your mind. Nothing left to cradle you but the arms of loved ones in imagination. They are all long dead or maybe not yet born. Its hard to tell out here."In reality, the band is a barely tangible mass of contradictions and broken links, but in their four available recordings and one cover, they embody the beautiful but dystopic universe that their description hints at. On their MySpace they claim to have "self produced and recorded their first album "Missing Persons,"which would have been completed in the year 2004, but neither Google nor weeks of Soulseek-searches have yielded any trace of information about the album. They have 66 "fans" listed and a meager 15 "comments," which are abysmally low numbers by anyone's standards but all of their listed songs have near-perfect recording quality, meticulous production, and hundreds of plays. The only thing about this band that makes any sense to me is their listed location: Oakdale, California.
A band like Pleasant Valley Aerospace needs to exist without any kind of context, so that they can transcend boundaries without ever knowing that there were boundaries. People who submerge themselves in sensory deprivation tanks do it to unlock levels of creativity in their subconscious that otherwise never could have surfaced--Oakdale had that same effect on Pleasant Valley Aerospace. PVA exists outside of any kind of musical conglomerate. It exists for itself and for the presumed greater earth that lies outside of Oakdale, only in turn, it exists for any presumed greater earth outside of anywhere. It represents the unattainable but forever visible horizon--the outside world that anyone dreams is right outside the borders of whatever traps them. It is the odd fixed agricultural void, Oakdale, that allowed Pleasant Valley Aerospace to create and become something transcendent and ubiquitous-- a revolution in its own rite.
Independent musicians in metropolitan cities create music that impresses and advances their local scene, but that self-consciousness precludes genuine creativity. Pleasant Valley Aerospace makes no mutilating attempt to fall into any scene but their own perfectly set stage, but also no attempt to avoid anything or everything because that's considered cool and edgy. Because of their (agri)cultural isolation they don't have to. What's so beautiful about Pleasant Valley Aerospace is that they clearly had a vision and created a world in their minds and then executed it as sound. Nothing else permeates.
As far as I am willing to believe, "Somewhere above the roar of ocean surf and the heat of the vale lies Pleasant Valley Aerospace." The future is in Oakdale, and we're never going to make it out there.
