Aspera Ad Astra

Sorry for the delay in updates! I was out of the country for a spell and things around here got a little slow. However, this is a sweet little nugget.

As anyone knows, good bands tend to evolve. Sure, maybe The Ramones didn’t change all that much, but besides them…good bands evolve. Often, this leads to backlash. Music fans like their bands to stay consistent. They like what they like and when a band switches gears too quickly on them, it can be a disaster. I know this first hand from my days playing with Franklin. For every person we met that enjoyed our later records and our more dub inspired approach there were at least two more people saying, “Fuck, you guys suck now! Go back to sounding like a band from DC.”

As a musician, it’s always a fine line between evolving and alienating the very people who wanted to listen to you in the first place. Life sucks, right?

Anyway, Aspera Ad Astra were one of those bands that enjoyed evolving. Each of their records changed in a dramatic way. From a more standard shoegaze approach to the almost mind-fuckery of their Sugar & Feathered album to their electronica inspired Oh, Fantastica record. Hell, they even evolved their name choosing to switch from Aspera Ad Astra to just plain Aspera in their later days.

Aspera had a lot folks that really went along for the ride with them, but there were just as many people who probably asked, “Huh?” I was certainly one of them from time to time, but now, going back to some of those records, I’m amazed at just how far ahead of the curve they were at the time and my confusion was my problem and definitely not theirs.

These recordings are from the Aspera vault. Some of their final demos before they disbanded in the spring of 2004. Of particular interest is “New Song Demo” and “New Song Rehearsal”. It’s fun hearing what an Aspera demo sounded like versus a live performance of the same song. Enjoy!

After Glory Front, the guys lost Karen as their keyboard player and backup/sometimes lead vocalist and went even further into the shoegaze universe. It was primarily their driving influence and they would continue to delve into it for sometime. However, deciding the name Glory Front sounded more like a white-power band they retreated the basement to write more music and select a new moniker. Enter Matt Werth.

Matt was a Little Rock, Arkansas native who I had met when he contacted my band Franklin to participate in a compilation LP. The We’ve Lost Beauty LP would be released on his label File 13 and we were honored as hell to participate. In addition, Matt and his friends put on shows in Little Rock and were willing and able to set up a show for Franklin and Fracture during our 1995 summer tour.

When I met Matt that summer, we instantly hit it off. We spent one afternoon driving around in his parents station wagon and that was the start of an oddly symbiotic relationship between Philadelphia and Little Rock Arkansas for years to come. The following summer, in 1996 Matt would book another show for Franklin and Goodbye, Blue Monday. During that trip, we became obsessed with the game 4-square (another thing we shared in common with the Arkansas kids) and one evening, while playing a righteous game in the parking lot of a grocery store, I played Matt the Glory Front demo. He had recently been accepted into college somewhere in Wisconsin I believe, and was having some dread about attending. However, once he heard that Aspera Ad Astra (Justin, Drew and Mike’s new moniker) needed a bass player, Matt’s eyes lit up.

Matt would end up ditching college in favor of moving to Philadelphia, immediately teaming up with Aspera Ad Astra for many more years.

Peace was Aspera’s first album. While it might sound a little dated and its references may be a bit obvious, at the time, it was a great album that barely hinted at the truly incredible places musically they would go in the future.

Sadly, track 9 on the album, a song called Take It Easy is simply too large of a file to be able to post here. Aspera Ad Astra really dug their slow burn jams.