all about Simply Saucer

SIMPLY SAUCER to perform live in support of their new CD "Half Human / Half Live":

Friday 4 April 2008 @ Westside Concert Theatre, Hamilton ON   w/ Battleship Ethel

Saturday 3 May 2008 @ St.Stephen's-in-the-Fields Church, Toronto, ON  w/ Battleship Ethel

Thursday 19 June 2008 @ Call the Office, London, ON

Friday 20 June 2008 @ Bohemian National Home, Detroit MI

Saturday 21 June 2008 @ Subterranean, Chicago IL  w/ Plastic Crimewave Sound

Sunday 22 June 2008 @ Mellwood Arts Center, Louisville KY [Terrastock 7]

Toronto Sun Review

SIMPLY SAUCER

Half Human / Half Life

Psychedelic Punk

Sun Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

Three decades after they crashed and burned, these long-lost '70s psych-punks from Hamilton have risen like a Phoenix. And on this long-overdue disc divided between recent studio and live recordings, they are definitely flying high. Moving nimbly from scrappy garage-rockers to grand space epics and acoustic hippie-folk, they do a fine job of making up for that lost time. 

-Darryl Sterdan

[courtesy Sun Publications | http://www.torontosun.com/Entertainment/Music/2008/05/18/5603401-sun.html]

...excerpt from a feature in Hamilton Magazine by J. Tennant [read the whole article here]:

Revelation Rock

Three decades after his band's first record, Simply Saucer frontman Edgar Breau is still out there

By James Tennant

They have been called "pioneers" and "as quintessentially Canadian as Medicare and street hockey." Their first album has been hailed as one of the best Canadian releases in history. And you probably haven't heard of them. The band is Simply Saucer, and by rights, they should have been lost forever, buried in the gritty depths of Hamilton's music history. Formed on the fringes of the scene, Simply Saucer garnered no critical praise until a decade after they broke up. This is their story, a story as anomalous as their sound.

In the late '60s and early '70s, mainstream music had become relatively friendly. Yet on the outer planets, rock 'n' roll seethed, mutating into new, edgier forms. The Warhol-inspired aesthetic of the Velvet Underground, the raw power of the Stooges and the psychedelic space rock of early Pink Floyd thrilled critics and inspired other musicians. At the same time, they could not compete with radio's more accessible sounds.

These were the types of artists that inspired Simply Saucer. Yet if Lou Reed couldn't reach a wider audience in New York, what chance did Simply Saucer have in Hamilton? Ahead of their time, Simply Saucer would have to wait for time to catch up – which would take over 20 years.

Simply Saucer was helmed by Edgar Breau, whose sojourn into the fringes of modern music began early. He began with country, Elvis, the Beatles; when he learned to play guitar in his youth, he picked away at songs by Gordon Lightfoot and, later, The Kinks' Ray Davies. As he grew up, he soaked himself in British psychedelia, from Pink Floyd to the Soft Machine. He dipped a toe in the Pacific with Moby Grape and the Grateful Dead. He revelled in the disjointed genius of Captain Beefheart and the hypnotic racket of German bands like Can and Amon Düül.

Record geeks in London and New York could just hit their respective Sohos to find these albums. In the Hammer, however, such music could only be had via special order. These special orders were stock in trade at Bob Moody's Record Bar on John St. North, where Breau loitered and made friends with other local rock intelligentsia.

"We used to get together and have record spinoffs," Breau recalls. "We'd get a bottle of wine and rate records on originality and all kinds of categories. We had fun like that." Inspired by the rock counterculture, as well as authors such as Kerouac and Wolfe, Breau and a friend headed west in 1972. They thumbed down highways and panhandled for change; Breau returned to Hamilton in the fall, a changed young man. "There was a creek at King and Quigley," he recalls. "I tossed all the books in the creek and that was it for schooling. I went right into putting this band together."

...follow the link below to read the entire article...

[courtesy J. Tennant / Hamilton Magazine | http://staging.hamiltonmagazine.com/sitepages/?aid=783]

MORE REVIEWS:

EYE

BY Nick Flanagan   April 30, 2008 14:04

Editorial Rating:

4 stars out of 5

After spending the past two decades honing John Fahey–inspired acoustic guitar work, Edgar Breau recently returned his focus to the influential and awesome Simply Saucer, the Hamilton group who fused psychedelic elements with '70s rock and a herky-jerky sound before breaking up in 1979. The title of Half Human Half Live explains itself, pairing six new studio songs with a six-song live set. The results often shred, displaying the immediacy of their earlier work whether it's in a colossal epic like "Clearly Invisible" or the instrumental blast of "Exit Plexit." Lower-key, folkier songs like "Dandelion Kingdom" change things up without wrecking the mood.

SIMPLY SAUCER PLAY ST. STEPHEN-IN-THE-FIELDS CHURCH (103 BELLEVUE) MAY 3.

[courtesty Nick Flanagan / Eye Weekly; http://www.eyeweekly.com/music/ondisc/article/25965]

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CHROMEWAVES.net

This week - previewing some acts in town this week to play the Over The Top Fest.

Simply Saucer / Half Human Half Live (Sonic Unyon) Originally active in the 1970s and then relegated to the dusty annals of Canadian punk rock history, Hamilton's Simply Saucer have resurfaced in recent years and been both collecting and delivering on their legend, most recently with their first, almost-proper album in Half Human Half Live. As the name implies, it's 50% studio cuts - recordings of songs written over 25 years ago but never committed to tape - and 50% live recordings culled from their recent reunion. And it's a fascinating melange of styles that could only have happened, un-self consciously, in the '70s. Surf-inflected instrumentals give way to Television-esque prog excursions at one turn, Floyd-ish psych-folk the next, all built on a simple but solid bed of '50s, garage-bred rock'n'roll. And while the back story is fascinating, even without it, if this were just a new band coming up today, it'd be a noteworthy record. It's hard not to listen to this and wonder, if these songs had reached the world's ears two and a half decades ago, what kind of impact they'd have had. I suspect it'd have been immense. For more on the band and the reunion, check out features from Chart, The Telegraph Journal, The Hamilton Spectator and View. Simply Saucer are at St. Stephen-in-the Fields Church on Saturday, May 3.

[http://www.chromewaves.net/index.php?itemid=3009]

PS: ...thank you...!

A review by Bob Mersereau:

SIMPLY SAUCER'S AMAZING COMEBACK

BOB MERSEREAU
BACKBEAT
Published Wednesday April 9th, 2008
Appeared on page D3

Is there a more bizarre and wonderful story in Canadian music than Simply Saucer's?

The virtually unknown '70s band from Hamilton, Ont., released one 45 in its lifetime, dissolving in 1979. But a chance meeting between a writer and the former leader, Edgar Breau, led to the discovery of some 1974 demos recorded by Bob Lanois. A strong camp of alternative, underground fans thought the demos were incredible and loved the unique mixture of progressive, European and punkish New York influences.

The '90s issue of the album became a world-wide critical success, eventually gathering positive mentions in Rolling Stone Magazine, Uncut, and other publications. Just over a year ago, Breau put down the acoustic he'd been playing for years, picked up the electric for the first time since '79 and formed a new version of the Saucer. Live shows brought new acclaim and led to the new CD, Half Human, Half Live (Sonic Unyon).

Breau dug out old, never-recorded Saucer material and added new band stuff. The CD is half studio material and half live. The new quintet is equally unique, featuring a couple of original Saucers now in their 50s, plus some young Hamiltonians versed in energetic rock and punk. Flying scorchers such as Almost Ready Betty combine rockabilly energy with layered production. Clearly Invisible is an experimental 10-minute sci-fi trip, and Now's The Time For The Party gets down and dirty into a blues trip worthy of Captain Beefheart. The live side presents the group at its explosive best, adept at noise and art. You can't make this stuff up, plus they're all great guys.

[Courtesy Telegraph Journal, Fredericton NB]

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/search/article/262555 

...Some more local hype:

Chartattack.com feature by Jamie Tennant:

http://chartattack.com/DAMN/2008/04/0912.cfm

Telegraph-Journal article by Bob Mersereau:

http://telegraphjournal.canadaeast.com/search/article/262555

Hamilton Spectator, article by Graham Rockingham:

http://www.thespec.com/Entertainment/article/348509 

VIEW Magazine, article by Jordy Yack:

http://www.viewmag.com/viewstory.php?storyid=6044 

NOW Magazine, album review by Tim Perlich:

http://www.nowtoronto.com/music/discs.cfm?content=162319

...neat little VUE Haiku/review...

http://www.vueweekly.com/article.php?id=8243

..a fresh review from Exclaim! magazine:

Simply Saucer’s Half Past, Half Future
By Liz Worth

Simply Saucer had been broken up for ten years before their first record, 1989’s Cyborgs Revisited, was even released. Yet that lone album was quickly adopted by the underground as a long-lost masterpiece, garnering the defunct band an ever-increasing cult following. That persistent momentum has since had Saucer crowned as Canada’s answer to the Velvet Underground, and the ever-growing interest around the band is what inspired them to make a comeback with this year’s Half Human, Half Live. It’s a record that plays out with the weight that music takes on when it’s been hermetically sealed for decades. Comprised of old material that’s been newly recorded, this is the album that Simply Saucer should have released when they were first around in the early ’70s. But back then, getting a full-length record out wasn’t so easy for a band that went against the grain, especially when they were living in Hamilton, Ontario, which was definitely not the place for a band as incongruous as this one. If things had been different back then, their recognition would have come a whole lot sooner.

“I just think maybe for its time we were in the wrong place,” says Edgar Breau, Saucer founder and front-man. “But because we were isolated, maybe it helped the music along because we weren’t already part of a scene where bands can develop conformities in the music. It was the way it was and the fact that the band was unknown maybe had something to do with its rediscovery, too, so that made people wonder how this all happened, where we came from and how we could have been playing this music in Hamilton, Ontario. So it just was the way it was meant to be, I think.” Breau describes Half Human as a transitional record, a bridge between past and present. These days, Simply Saucer consists of bassist Kevin Christoff, who’s been around since the band’s earlier inceptions, along with Dan Winterman (guitar, theremin, tambourine), Joe Csontos (drums), and Steve Foster (guitar, backing vocals). While Foster and Winterman are of a younger generation than the rest of the band, they’ve worked to capture the ethos of Saucer’s earlier visions. The kick-off track, “Exit Plexit,” goes back to the band’s earliest days, while “Clearly Invisible” acts as a companion piece to “Illegal Bodies,” which appeared on Cyborgs Revisited and gives a nod to the album that launched the band’s long-delayed career. Having left room for improvisation and electronics, Half Human, Half Live is wrought with tightly haphazard slopes and freak-outs. There’s also a contrast to it all, which Breau puts as “a retro, futurist slant” that, like its history, consistently hovers between the past and the future.

“We tried to retain a kind of raw live sound that the band was known for, even in the studio tracks,” Breau says. “There wasn’t a lot of over-dubbing, it’s mainly what you hear is what you get.” Breau feels that Saucer’s story was all leading up to the here and now, and Half Human is a certain testament to that theory. One half is taken from a live performance that took place at Hamilton’s Catherine North Studios in the summer of 2007. This show in itself indicated the momentum that’s built up around this band: A couple of separate camera crews were set up; one was there to document the night for an upcoming Simply Saucer documentary. The venue was all layers of heat and sound that remained largely undisturbed by a stunned audience content to remain perfectly still and marvel at what was happening before them. While Breau says they could have made an album solely of new material, he didn’t feel the audience was ready for that. Their fans haven’t had the chance to follow the band over the years, and Breau hasn’t, either.

With influences streaming out of the Velvet Underground, the Kinks, Stooges, and Pink Floyd, to name but a few, Simply Saucer spent the earlier part of the 1970s bringing their loud, improvisational, experimental visions to southern Ontario — or at least they’d been trying. As a band that brought a barrage of unpredictability to the stage by offering a repertoire that included tearing into a 20-minute song that was nothing but screaming noise, they emptied rooms, got thrown off the stage, and even played a prom where the school’s principal was brought to the verge of tears.

As the 1977 punk explosion hit southern Ontario, Simply Saucer saw an opportunity to finally get a break. By then their line-up had already gone through several changes and their sound had been retooled into a more straight-ahead, Kinks-ian attack. But for all of the punk scene’s rebellious, non-conformist ideologies, Saucer’s struggle continued. The band remained in a constant state of antagonism with the scene around them. They released one single, 1978’s “She’s A Dog,” the recording of which was spurred by friend and manager Gary Pig Gold and paid for through a corn roast on Hamilton Mountain. By ’79, they called it quits. Ten years later, a former manager found the tapes from Simply Saucer’s now-seminal 1974 recording session (engineered in a basement by brothers Bob and Daniel Lanois) in his closet. Those tapes became Cyborgs Revisited, an album that was quickly awash in critical acclaim coming from all angles — everyone from Thurston Moore to Brian Wilson were jumping on the Saucer ship. Ever since, they’ve been hailed as Canada’s first proto-punk band, and with the release of Half Human, Half Live, they’re poised to break away from being Hamilton’s best-kept secret. It’s been a journey of rediscovery that’s as unlikely as any rock n’ roll dream come true can get, but the aesthetic of the past becoming present probably won’t last for much longer. Now that Cyborgs has allowed Simply Saucer to finally establish the history they should have had, Half Human is propelling them into a whole new chapter in their story, one that is likely to see them continue to push forward instead of dwelling on the past.

“Getting the band out to a wider audience, that’s the intent right now,” Breau says, adding that a defining moment in Saucer’s resurrection was getting the band down to New York — something that never happened for them in the 1970s. “After being together so long [back then], we really should have had a couple of LPs out and been able to tour on the strength of what we did best. Again, that’s happening now.”

[courtesy Liz Worth / http://www.exclaim.ca/articles/multiarticlesub.aspx?csid1=120&csid2=4&fid1=30402]

Here's a copy of the first published review of "Half-Human/Half-Live" that we're aware of:

SIMPLY SAUCER Half Human/Half Live (Sonic Unyon)
It's been nearly 30 years since Simply Saucer put something new on record. As a result, it becomes a little too easy to think of this album as a historical landmark, as opposed to an artistic creation. As one might expect, this isn't the original Saucer lineup, but two of the founding members remain for what they've dubbed their "first full-length album." Half Human/Half Live is a collection of six unreleased (but only recently recorded) songs and a six-song live set performed in the summer of 2007, which features new versions of songs from Cyborgs Revisited. Perhaps the most startling thing about this latest incarnation of Simply Saucer is that they don't sound as old as assumes. They can still sing about partying without a lick of irony. This is an exuberant punk/pop romp and, for those wondering, yes, Simply Saucer still have an affinity for The Velvet Underground. Scott Bryson

[courtesy Scott Bryson / http://chartattack.com/DAMN/2008/03/2501.cfm]

EDGAR BREAU INTERVIEW WITH LOU MOLINARO* [excerpts below; read the whole thing, including an interview with Joe, here.]

Lou:  Simply Saucer's second wind is very important because it sheds light on the true meaning of the Independent music existence. A cult status band who has been labeled as a proto-type punk band in 1974 comes back 30 years later and receives international attention.  Does this make sense to you, Edgar?
Edgar:  Only when you know the whole story of how it happened and the role played by certain music critics who took up our cause and promoted the band when we were long dead. As well, our influences themselves over the years grew in importance, especially the Velvet Underground who had become one of the most influential bands in the world despite never having a hit record.

Lou:  Hamilton definitely had some sort of magical ingredients in the Burlington Bay.  Take this into consideration.  King Biscuit Boy, Gord Lewis, Mickey DeSadist, Dave Rave, Tim Gibbons, Tom Wilson, Edgar Breau, Harrison Kennedy, Daniel and Bob Lanois, and a bunch more.......What explains this musical mythology?
Edgar:  All of the above artists could have moved away and stayed away but we all chose to keep a strong connection to this city because we love the people here and believe that our work has an integral connection to this area. Without it we wouldn't have been the same. I think there's a stubborn tenaciousness in all of us. Also not being part of a trendy scene in a way helps the artist arrive at a vision that is truly his/her own.

Lou:  How did Simply Saucer start?
Edgar:  Simply Saucer started with two boys attending Bishop Ryan High School, myself and Paul Colilli a keyboard player talking endlessly in and out of class about all the cool records we were buying. Later on, we met a couple of others at Bob Moody's Record Bar on John St. My foster brother played synth and audio generator and the bass player Kevin Christoff I met at Sir Wilfred Laurier High School. We used to have record spinoffs with Imants Krumins, where we drank a lot of wine and played and rated records..bands like the Saints, Savage Rose, the Velvets, Flamin' Groovies, Hawkwind, Kinks, Thirteenth Floor Elevator, Seeds, Can, Faust, Sun Ra..etc etc

Lou:  Did being so different musically, effect all of you on a personal basis?  For some reason, I get this mental image of people looking at you guys and thinking..."who are these guys?"  Is there any validity to this?
Edgar:  Yea there was a certain artistic, not exactly affectation, but a deliberate turning away from the mainstream not only musically but in some ways socially. We were similar to the French linguistic deconstructionists who wanted to start all over again with language. Music was something to be deployed like a weapon against the unsuspecting audience. Unfortunately at the time there WAS NO audience for our music which was chaotic and very much improvised.

Lou:  Obviously, the name is an ode to early Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett.  How did you first learn about the mentioned names?
Edgar:  I'm sure it was Paul Colilli who introduced me to Piper at the Gates of Dawn '67/68. He read a lot of English Pop mags and eventually we discovered the Move, the Herd, the Soft Machine, Tyranosaurus Rex and many other great bands.

Lou:  Explain what Hamilton was like musically in the early 70's?  Where did you shop for records back then?
Edgar:  There were a lot of cover bands. I bought records at Kresge's, Melody Lane, Bob Moody's Record Bar, Hermandad's and of course Sam the Record Man's and various Buffalo stores. Plus from import record catalogues.  You could find records in variety stores as well on budget labels.

Lou: What were the early Saucer shows like in Hamilton?  When was the official first Simply Saucer show?
Edgar: The first show we played was at St. Alban's Anglican Church on Brittania St. in the east end. We were an east end band. We played three sets and I know the second set consisted of one song called "Noise". We only played that one once. It was completely improvised and I played an audio generator. In the middle of it, fights began breaking out in the audience and eventually the cops arrived and hauled some people away.

Lou:  At what venues did you perform in Hamilton?
Edgar:  We played Westdale High, Sir John A. McDonald, Burlington Fair, the YMCA, YWCA, the Kiwanis Club

Lou:  Bands like the Velvets, Stooges and Barrett's version of Pink Floyd are often name dropped by those who try to explain Simply Saucer.  Are there any other bands that we should also acknowledge as inspirations?
Edgar:  Can, the Krautrock bands in general,for me Moby Grape, Lighnin Hopkins, the Kinks, I'm sure the Stones and a little bit of Hendrix, Hawkwind, the Soft Machine, Pink Fairies, Eddie Cochrane, Terry Riley, Sun Ra lots of others

*..read all the rest here.

NEWS:

Chartattack.com article by J. Tennant:

Simply Saucer Threaten To Make Music For More Than Rock Critics
Tuesday March 11, 2008 @ 06:30 PM
By: ChartAttack.com Staff

Simply Saucer

Once upon a time in a dark corner of Hamilton, a group of ne'er-do-wells called Simply Saucer set about making an unholy racket. Unholy and unheard, that is. Scant few paid attention, performances were scarce and record labels weren't interested.

No there were probably some pissed-off record company executives across the country when Simply Saucer appeared in Chart's March 1996 "Top 50 Canadian Albums Of All Time" issue. "Cyborgs Revisited?," they might have muttered to themselves. "I've never even heard of 'em? Who are these jokers?"

They're the jokers you didn't sign 30 years ago, bub. Thanks to a vinyl release in 1989 and Sonic Unyon's CD release in 2003, Cyborgs Revisited — Simply Saucer's posthumous collection of demos and live tracks — has finally gone from critically acclaimed collector's item to something you're actually able to hear.

Saucer have reunited in Hamilton under the tutelage of founder/singer/guitarist Edgar Breau. People have wanted Breau to put the band back together since 1989, but now he says he finally feels comfortable with the idea.

"It just kind of happened. I didn't even have an electric guitar. I started wondering if I could still play. I thought I'd probably be really shitty… but I started thinking, 'I have a right to my own repertoire,' and the only way to really redo it right is in the context of the band."

Breau brought back co-founder Kevin Christoff and recruited drummer Joe Csontos (Forgotten Rebels), guitarist Steve Foster (Stoked — no, not Brian Melo's band) and guitarist/noisemaker Dan Wintermans (Head|phone|over|tone).

 

Simply Saucer will play dates to celebrate the March 25 release of their first "intentional" release, Half Human, Half Live. Like Cyborgs before it, half the album was recorded in studio and the other half in performance. Some of the material has appeared elsewhere in other forms, including demo recordings, but most of the tracks are first-time recordings of songs Breau wrote for Saucer in the '70s. Three songs can be previewed on Simply Saucer's MySpace page.

 

The next album, however, is likely to feature freshly written material that branches out beyond the band's Velvet Underground/Stooges/Krautrock blend.

"I'd like to broaden the fan base, really," says Breau. "I think in doing that you lose some of the critical elitist acclaim, but I'd like to let the songwriting kind of take us places that maybe we haven't been before and see if we can widen the appeal a bit."

A Simply Saucer documentary is also being made, so the word should spread even further and perhaps move the group from cult status to… something at least slightly more lucrative.

Here are the songs on Half Human Half Live:

• "Exit Plexit"
• "Taking You Down"
• "Almost Ready Betty"
• "Now's The Time For The Party"
• "Clearly Invisible"
• "Dandelion Kingdom"
• "Low Profile"
• "Mole Machine"
• "I Take It"
• "Get My Thrills"
• "I Can Change My Mind"
• "Illegal Bodies"

—James Tennant

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

SIMPLY SAUCER to release Half Human Half Live on March 25th

Legendary Hamilton, Ontario psych/punk combo SIMPLY SAUCER will release its first ever full-length album on March 25th through Sonic Unyon. Half Human Half Live was recorded by the band last summer at Hamilton’s Catherine North Studios, with band guitarist Steve Foster handling production duties.

Half Human Half Live is exactly as the title alludes to. The first six tracks are studio recordings of songs written by the band in their original incarnation that were never recorded. Included within these songs are “Exit Plexit", the first track ever written by the band, the all acoustic track “Dandelion Kingdom” and the nearly eleven minute epic “Clearly Invisible”, the center point of the album. The final six tracks on the record were recorded live in front of a private audience on June 23rd, 2007 and features updated recordings of tracks from the Cyborgs Revisited reissue, including “Mole Machine”, “Illegal Bodies” and “I Can Change My Mind” from their 1977 45 rpm single on Pig Records.

The Cyborgs Revisited album was originally released as a limited edition LP on Mole Recordings in 1989. This compilation contained studio recordings made with Bob Lanois on the first side and a live recording from June 1975 on the other. Sonic Unyon reissued the album in a remastered expanded format with nine-previously unreleased bonus tracks in the spring of 2003. Sonic Unyon/Get Back reissued a remastered version of the original LP, containing no bonus tracks, in the autumn of 2003. In 2007, Cyborgs Revisted was voted the 36th best Canadian album of all-time by more than 580 members of the music industry in the Top 100 Canadian Albums book, compiled by Bob Mersereau.

While the Cyborgs Revisited release has received a great amount of critical praise in the past five years since it was reissued on Sonic Unyon in 2003, in many ways Half Human Half Live is the first cohesive document of SIMPLY SAUCER as a band. These songs were all recorded at the same time, they all have the same players and they feel more cohesive than anything previously released. Of course, this is not the same band that made Cyborgs Revisited, and after more than thirty years who could expect it to be? The members of the Saucer are no longer in their early twenties, the change in Edgar Breau’s voice is the first thing to tell you that, but this album has vitality and an edge some may not expect after a near thirty-year hiatus. Instead it’s more like a new band, getting ready for takeoff.

Track listing:

1 Exit Plexit

2 Taking You Down

3 Almost Ready Betty

4 Now's The Time For the Party

5 Clearly Invisible

6 Dandelion Kingdom

7 Low Profile

8 Mole Machine

9 I Take It

10 Get My Thrills

11 I Can Change My Mind

12 Illegal Bodies

Select Cyborgs Revisited press quotes:

"Cyborgs Revisited, now embellished with outtakes from the band's later years, is pretty obviously one of the best Canadian albums ever" - Carl Wilson, THE GLOBE AND MAIL

"A masterpiece of neo-punk/psych outness... a brain-baking feast of proto-punk repetition and overdriven interstellar guitar scrawl" **** - Andrew Carden, MOJO

"Cyborgs Revisited is the greatest Canadian record ever" - ALTERNATIVE PRESS

"this spastic, electro-shocked amalgam of Velveteen trance rock, Stooges sleaze and unspooling early-Floydian weirdness is practically fizzing with unchecked energy and left field invention, and still sounds contemporary enough to be the work of some NMEendorsed hot young things from New York's new school" - Ben Rayner, TORONTO STAR

"a band that could splice the DNA of Syd Barrett and Soft Machine with Iggy Pop and the Velvet Underground, that could bridge post-psychedelic mind-altering electronics with a buzzed proto-punk urgency" 8.8/10 - Chris Dahlen, PITCHFORKMEDIA.COM

"Simply Saucer were pre-punk psychedelic pioneers, overeducated hardcore derelicts with soft spots for Roxy Music and Can, glaring sonic comets from the underground whose sound is one of the year's most surprising discoveries." - CMJ

"Cyborgs brims with thuddy UK socko-del rhythms, twisted gaugey string huzz, and heaving vocals 'n' arrangements fulla knowledge of the Velvets, the Troggs, Sun Ra and the Stooges. What more could you ask for?" - Byron Coley, SPIN

"If this isn't the greatest Canadian rock record ever, then nothing is." - Richard Moule, SCENE LONDON