Sonic Boom, aka Peter Kember, announces the June 5th release date of his new solo LP All Things Being Equal, his first since 1990’s Spectrum LP. As an early treat, the hypnotic lead-off single and music video “Just Imagine”, dropped yesterday. Over the vivid, calculating arps, Kember’s trance-inducing vocal invites listeners to follow his bliss. The accompanying video, directed by Nuno Jardim, brings the song’s soulful psychedelia to life in visuals resembling an electronic aurora borealis. As these vibrant lights whirl and overlap, they eventually take the form of Kember. He becomes the viewer’s guide of sorts, transporting them through storm clouds and deep water until the whole world dissolves, putting them back where they started but with a new sense of peace.
All Things Being Equal updates the Sonic Boom discography with a second solo LP, and a first for Carpark Records – home to several artists Kember has produced and mixed for in the past.“I wanted to get out of the urban commercialised environment,” Kember explains of his move to a national park in Sintra, Portugal, which he calls “an enchanting area famous for being inspiring.” His new surroundings inspired the album’s lyrics, which stress humanity’s role in our planet’s survival and continuance at this “critical cross-road,” redress the imbalance of power in our 
symbiotic relationship with nature and plants ($1 from every album sold will be donated to environmental advocacy organization Earth Island), and riddle over Animist spirituality. Wonderfully layered, drone-based voyages coalesce into hooky showcases for the idiosyncratic textures of vintage analog synthesizers.
PREVIOUSLY: You can literally hear the drugs in Spacemen 3’s music: Kember and Pierce wove dense, hypnotic chimeras of sound out of hazy, heavily-pedaled web of guitars (usually one chiming immaculately and the other completely fuzzed out), the pneumatic wheeze of vintage keyboards, throbbing bass and trance-inducing rhythms fashioned out of simple, repetitive drum patterns. Sample lyric: “In 1987 all I wanna do is get stoned.” Still, whatever they were taking it worked, because if they started out channeling their impeccable record collection, (The Velvet Underground, the Rolling Stones, the Stooges, the MC5, Captain Beefheart, Sun Ra, the Silver Apples, Kraftwerk, Neu!, 13th Floor Elevators, Red Krayola, the Electric Prunes, the Beach Boys, the Cramps, the Gun Club, Tav Falco, Muddy Waters, Bo Diddley, the Staple Singers and John Lee Hooker) they soon became something completely original, something ecstatic and transcendent. Like putting conch shell up to your ear and hearing the infinite, or at least an uncanny approximation of it. MORE
PREVIOUSLY: For All The F*cked Up Children Of This World, We Give You A Q&A With Sonic Boom/Peter Kember