Space Invaders

Part three of a new series, where reader Spencer sends me a suggestion for a song and I write about it. Two weeks ago we started with the DFA remix of Mars, Arizona by Jon Spencer's Blues Explosion and last week Motor Bass Get Phunked Up from La Funk Mob. Spencer sent the latest suggestion through a few days ago and now we are going thisaway...

Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass

I-f's Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass came out in 1998, Dutch electro courtesy of Ferenc E. van der Sluijs. I-f is short for Interr- Ference. What the Dutch don't know about smoking grass isn't worth knowing. Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass is sublime late 90s electro, a machine bassline that threatens to bust the speakers it buzzes so violently, lazer beam sound effects ricocheting around the place and those robotic vocals. The snare and hi- hats are right at the edge of things too, everything, in the classic Motorhead tradition, louder than everything else. Over at Youtube someone has left the comment, 'This track will be relevant until the end of time' and that is in no way an overestimation.

By the late 90s dance music had transformed and turned itself inside out on multiple occasions, splintering into scenes and genres, sub- scenes and sub- genres. Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass has a timelessness that doesn't root it in the late 90s, it could be from a decade earlier or later, it transcends. Catchy as you like, accessible and abrasive, and weirdly, despite being so robotic and mechanical, it has a very human centre to it too- space invaders have a human heart. I guess they'd have to, to enjoy smoking. 

All this is also turning into a potentially rather great longform mix- The Spencer Sessions maybe- with the songs from this series eventually skillfully/ clumsily sequenced together.