The Mothership Headquarters (1998-2002)
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Born out of our love for KYUSS, MONSTER MAGNET, MOTÖRHEAD, THE HELLACOPTERS and all things loud and rocking hard, SPACE PATROL lasted for four years before the band went their separate ways. JC Alienseed and I would end up forming HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM, Joris moved for a while to China and Alex, Tristan and I would only reunite for short lived projects such as RÖTÖR and MINIONS, two bands with no official releases.
But SPACE PATROL has always been very dear to my heart. To me, this band will always have the taste of unfinished business so, after all these years with no web presence -- long gone are the days of Multimania websites and spacepatrol-hq.com -- I'm glad to finally bring a brand new digital home to this old band in the 2020s. I guess with hindsight I could say SPACE PATROL came a bit too early on the then nascent french "stoner scene". It is true we had an early start. SPACE PATROL shared stages and record space (sometimes even rehearsal space!) with all the early adopters of the fat riff like FOUR TRACK JUNCTION (later called LOADING DATA), LOW VIBES, GLOWSUN and a few others. At least that's what I read in that University paper (!!!) on the rise of French Stoner haha. But to be honest, our sound was always a bit different from the get-go, a hodgepodge of various influences that would take some time before it all properly gelled together (in my opinion, just before we split up -- but the others might disagree). We were never 'true stoners' after the QOTSA-FU MANCHU-KYUSS trinity fashion... Nothing wrong with playing stoner rock, mind you, it's been done to death these days but it doesn't mean you can't do it right... it's just JC and I came from an underground death & doom metal background, Alex was more into classic rock, Tristan was listening to BAL-SAGOTH non stop at the time and Joris was - and still is - a blues guitarist first and foremost. Also, not knowing anything about recording techniques or having any kind of reliable 'scene' to play gigs to or find support for recordings etc. proved to be a major drawback. But all in all, I'm very proud of all of our releases. The music may be young and immature but sincere and heartfelt. We had a blast playing together and we are still good friends to this day, even after countless fights and split ups... So feel free to dive in the archives, I've put up decent uncompressed rips of all our releases on a server for the download freaks... but everything is also on my YouTube channel, if you'd rather be streaming these ancient audio monstrosities we unleashed upon an unsuspecting world... more than 20 years ago already!! |
Discography
Links
Gallery 
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Pure Interstellar R'N'R Demo (1999)
Our first ever recordings. I don't really remember how we proceeded but I think Mike, a friend of our drummer Tristan's came to the studio with his own PC and Cubase (quite a feat in '99 as studio-friendly laptops weren't there yet) and recorded us. The sound is horribly messy, everything is very amateurish but those are our punkiest and most catchy tunes ever. A few years later, we still played "Planet X-666" as an encore... Also noticeable (for the two of us who care about such things) is how the spoken part on this song would also veer us off towards spacier soundscapes. Joris only played the second guitar on last song "Delusions" but we loved it so much that he was asked to join the band full time shortly after.
Favourite song: "One Way Ticket" - a catchy punk hymn with a sing along chorus and great backing vocals by "Sick". My bark is almost bearable on this one.
Bonus punk points for putting the cheap beer and tobacco we were snuffing ourselves with on the thank list.
And super dork lifetime achievements for the weird nicknames that we came up for ourselves: Max Asscore, Sick, "Grumpy Weasel" and Nanabozzo! Now in the name of all things stoned, what the hell were we thinking?
Favourite song: "One Way Ticket" - a catchy punk hymn with a sing along chorus and great backing vocals by "Sick". My bark is almost bearable on this one.
Bonus punk points for putting the cheap beer and tobacco we were snuffing ourselves with on the thank list.
And super dork lifetime achievements for the weird nicknames that we came up for ourselves: Max Asscore, Sick, "Grumpy Weasel" and Nanabozzo! Now in the name of all things stoned, what the hell were we thinking?
Coming Down To The Velvet Lodge (1999)
Lots of big firsts for our second release. First semi-professional recordings with someone who more or less knew what he was doing ; first proper label release ; first (and last) split CD of our 'career'.
So I think we hooked up with Matt from LOW VIBES through his brother, who was a mutual connection from the record store both Alex and I were working at. Anyway, it turned out he was singing and playing bass in a stoner band too and very keen on starting a record label. After we exchanged demos, he agreed to put out a pro printed split CD with 3 new (and very long) tracks by SPACE PATROL which was still a 4-piece band at the time. We'd been transitioning very fast from a punk/stoner band to a more psychedelic doomy stoner thing, not far removed from MONSTER MAGNET's "Tab" (minus the musicianship of course!) and rehearsing more intensely than ever.
I remember the whole thing happening in a blur and I seem to recall all music recordings taking place at Matt's rehearsal place in Paris. JC Alienseed's odd bass tones proved to be very hard to capture and the recording doesn't do justice to the massive juggernaut his bass playing was, that's too bad. It's not very well produced, to be honest. Matt was still honing his craft at the time. I did the vocals later on at his flat, a situation which I wasn't very comfortable with and it sort of transpires in the end result I think; as what came out of my very self-conscious throat must be my worst vocal deliveries ever! I wish I'd rehearsed and practised my vocal lines more before entering the studio... It's too bad really as those three songs are among the best we ever wrote. Lots of epic parts and cool riffs if you can sort of tolerate the bad vocals.
The last song featured on this rip was another hidden bonus track that would play after a few silent tracks. More or less improvised directly at LOW VIBES' rehearsal place, "Cheerleader From Hell" - this was me going through my Buffy phase - saw the two bands merge together. I think Alex & JC played with Matt and LB's drummer, with Matt & I doing split vocals. It's a very fun number, fresh and improvised -- and maybe my all-time favourite Space Patrol tune ever!
Favourite song: "The Probe", which was my first proper attempt at a clean-sung chorus. The songs also features a very pleasing build up and great chord scales.
Bonus 'hard cold truth' points to the one Rate Your Music reviewer who made the following statement circa 2009: "the cover is also quite disconcerting, it is obvious looking back that the uninitiated who would find this disc today would have great difficulty in imagining its content."
So I think we hooked up with Matt from LOW VIBES through his brother, who was a mutual connection from the record store both Alex and I were working at. Anyway, it turned out he was singing and playing bass in a stoner band too and very keen on starting a record label. After we exchanged demos, he agreed to put out a pro printed split CD with 3 new (and very long) tracks by SPACE PATROL which was still a 4-piece band at the time. We'd been transitioning very fast from a punk/stoner band to a more psychedelic doomy stoner thing, not far removed from MONSTER MAGNET's "Tab" (minus the musicianship of course!) and rehearsing more intensely than ever.
I remember the whole thing happening in a blur and I seem to recall all music recordings taking place at Matt's rehearsal place in Paris. JC Alienseed's odd bass tones proved to be very hard to capture and the recording doesn't do justice to the massive juggernaut his bass playing was, that's too bad. It's not very well produced, to be honest. Matt was still honing his craft at the time. I did the vocals later on at his flat, a situation which I wasn't very comfortable with and it sort of transpires in the end result I think; as what came out of my very self-conscious throat must be my worst vocal deliveries ever! I wish I'd rehearsed and practised my vocal lines more before entering the studio... It's too bad really as those three songs are among the best we ever wrote. Lots of epic parts and cool riffs if you can sort of tolerate the bad vocals.
The last song featured on this rip was another hidden bonus track that would play after a few silent tracks. More or less improvised directly at LOW VIBES' rehearsal place, "Cheerleader From Hell" - this was me going through my Buffy phase - saw the two bands merge together. I think Alex & JC played with Matt and LB's drummer, with Matt & I doing split vocals. It's a very fun number, fresh and improvised -- and maybe my all-time favourite Space Patrol tune ever!
Favourite song: "The Probe", which was my first proper attempt at a clean-sung chorus. The songs also features a very pleasing build up and great chord scales.
Bonus 'hard cold truth' points to the one Rate Your Music reviewer who made the following statement circa 2009: "the cover is also quite disconcerting, it is obvious looking back that the uninitiated who would find this disc today would have great difficulty in imagining its content."
Secret Sounds Of The Spaceways (2001)
Our first proper album! It's got a weird production but at least someone whose actual profession was to record bands *did* look into it. There was this guy working at our old rehearsal place who was recording bands there so naturally we asked him to do it for us. I'm not sure he fully understood what we were trying to do -- but at least he managed to make JC Alienseed's bass sound better than on the split album.
Musically it's got our most accomplished songs, lots of intricate riffs, time shifts, weird breaks and odd patterns. Lyrically, I sound better (not good, I said "better") than on the previous releases although some parts still make me clench my teeth when I listen to it. I was doing my military service which was still mandatory in France at the time, and did not rehearse much before entering the studio... but I did try my best.
Favourite song: "When Midnight Strikes"... dark souls are born twice!
No thanks to: the crappy artwork we came up with, the poor choice of fonts and the very basic photoshop skills. But at least we made it as #410 to this list, which has all mushroom-related album covers on it... just one inch before Terence McKenna, take that you dirty old psychonaut!
Musically it's got our most accomplished songs, lots of intricate riffs, time shifts, weird breaks and odd patterns. Lyrically, I sound better (not good, I said "better") than on the previous releases although some parts still make me clench my teeth when I listen to it. I was doing my military service which was still mandatory in France at the time, and did not rehearse much before entering the studio... but I did try my best.
Favourite song: "When Midnight Strikes"... dark souls are born twice!
No thanks to: the crappy artwork we came up with, the poor choice of fonts and the very basic photoshop skills. But at least we made it as #410 to this list, which has all mushroom-related album covers on it... just one inch before Terence McKenna, take that you dirty old psychonaut!