Music

Space Team Electra

Glitter and Lo-Fi

How to approach a band that's less band than collective mind? -- In the case of Space Team Electra, quickly. You don't want to be the last on your block to know.

A delicate brushstroke across our local musical landscape, the Space Team makes sounds others do not. No predictable, gimme-my-record-contract guitar wankery, no noodling self-indulgence, just a lush, textured sound enjoyable as a fresh orange. Most amazing is the lack of ego in this confluence of creators -- frontwoman/polymath Myshel Prasad, guitarist Bill Kunkle, drummer Kit Peltzel, recently retired bassist Greg Fowkes (replaced, at least temporarily, by Czars drummer Jeff Linsenmaier) -- who have been surfing the spaceways since 1994.

"I pretty much write all the songs at this point," Prasad said. "But everybody writes their own parts. I may write the song all the way through, but whatever they play, 99 times out of 100, they wrote it. It's amazing, after playing together for so long, to throw a song out and watch what they come up with."

What they come up with is slithery, sensuous, the Velvet Underground sharing a watercress sandwich with a contemplative Patti Smith. Guitar that alternately jangles and weeps, occasionally building near-crescendos before tumbling delicately backward. Prasad's clean, emotive singing slips in and out of the mix, commanding center stage then gladly surrendering it. There is an ease, a depth of feeling here--the players don't compete, they co-operate. A function, certainly, of their eight years together, but also of the respect they have for one another's abilities.

When asked to describe to the band's sound, Prasad laughed. "The last time, out of resentment, I called it violet core." An apt description. In a scene that doesn't necessarily celebrate subtlety and inference, Space Team Electra have by not stepping into the usual industry traps, hollowed themselves a comfortable niche. Rather than rush work to the listening public, they take the time to write and craft it -- two years, in the case of their first full-length CD, 1998's Vortex Flower. Their involvement with production and distribution is also unusual.

"I remember, on Vortex Flower , when we were doing the production on that, there were so many struggles--what to do, a lot of dissatisfaction with the sound, etc. etc., and I remember Greg saying, 'just let Keith (the producer) do it.' And it never occurred to me! It never occurred to me to just lay your shit down and walk away."

Space Team Electra will release their next CD, The Intergalactic Torch Song --only four and a half years in the making-- later this year on Sonic Halo, Prasad's record label. It would be easy to chalk such a gap to anything but a commitment to art--squabbles, money, squabbles about money--but the simple fact is this: these are people who care about what they do. They want it to be perfect, to meet their own exacting standard.

If their local popularity is any indication, it's a stance their fans appreciate. "I'm so out of it, I don't know what people really think," Prasad said. "But I love our crowd. I love the venues we get to play out here. As far as I'm concerned, Denver's been pretty good to me."

The many votes they received for 'Concert of the Year' in our Yearbook issue (Vol. 4, Issue 4), positive press from nearly every local raindeforester--these things certainly bear out their standing in the musical community. It doesn't hurt that Prasad is about as intelligent and engaging an individual as you're likely to find, and that her level of passion is breathtakingly genuine, or that she remembers things like the name of the one producer they couldn't fit into Torch Song's liner notes. So, in the interest of fairness, not to mention bringing a wonderfully all-purpose phrase into the lexicon, let us end with Prasad's missive to that very individual, as well as fans and the uninitiated: "Thank you, Paul Stubblebine!"

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