Through The Glass from Dark to Bright; Seeing with Spectacle Experiment eyes….

Hadrian Mordecai formed the Spectacle Experiment in early 2001 as his quest into the aural realm of artists like Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, Doves, and Failure. The Edison-based Mordecai, 26, previously played keyboards in such local electronic units as Sacred Confinement and Burn Cycle.

And with such associations you’d think we’d pick up on it sooner, but we just grabbed Spectacle Experiment’s recent ‘Just in Time for Nothing’ CD off the top of the pile and soon realized what we were missing. All 10 songs were written by Hadrian Mordecai except for ‘Free Nights’ which Hadrian co-wrote with Philip’s Head guitarist Ben Ross; As such, Spectacle Experiment IS Hadrian on synths, guitars and vocals, with guest spots on the new album by area scene veterans Damian Gonzalez on bass, Scott Wilson on drums, Mary Ann Wilson and Nicole Finner on vocals and Liz Gonzalez on violin.

“Spectacle X” has gone through several incarnations with various personnel in and out of the band, but with ‘Just in time for nothing’ young Hadrian has finally hit his stride. As on ‘One More Day’, with its stark guitar build-up and whispering tension that murmur away until it all suddenly lunges into unleashed anguish; great psychedelic/buzz themes here that continue flexing muscle on the delicate to voluptuous onslaught of psycho-sepulchral riffs which intro the discarded angst of ‘Thrown Away’.

Superficial bitches beware, this boy is a deadly sharp cookie for real, and if this be ‘shoegazer’ fodder, then let that electro- energy surround me baby.

Because the guitars and FX just meld intensely with dark lyrical themes and embracingly ominous anthems, and by third song ‘Just Like You’, you strain to hear the whispers over the backbeats and all you want is more: A clanging guitar shoots sparks into this song about over-identifying with an identity crisis; who cares if its yours/hers or ITS, the aural buzz and a noisier backdrop only amplifiy the song’s angry hook and Hadrian’s shifting vocal persona.

Other pieces intrigue as well, like the cosmic twinkling and gurgling of ‘Free Nights’ that sound like Tomita on Ecstasy and ‘Shrooms, or the acoustic lover’s kiss-off that is ‘Out of Focus’.

Like local syntho-soulmates Spiraling, the vocals are often embedded in the mix like another guitar or keyboard; as on the gracefully ominous and controlled mainriff of ‘Holding On’ that builds slowly into a simple piano theme; you hear regret, fear and release as Hadrian dreamily asserts ‘I am a masochist’, and the song like much of the rest concludes in a hopeful, upbeat texture…

The band only previously released a 3 song promo demo, and with such a primal sound on their first “official time” out, one can hardly tag this as Shoegazing, as Spectacle X’s ominously trademarked synth-squonk and seminal noise are inter-shredded with primally oozing guitar and Hadrian’s vocal utterances and outbursts…

These foreboding sonic dreamscapes are often punctuated by primordial guitar riffs and anguished yells. Your ear may hear a scream, but Hadrian insists that ‘those are yells, not screams.’ Regardless, this is one lunging beauty of a project that should be heard by fans of all alterna-genres;