Q: when does a band make loud, screaming punk, spacy poetry and psuedo-country, all without sounding stupid or pretentious?
Q: when can a band do more instrumentals than vocal songs, and not be surf?
Q: when does a band make a song that sounds like the Spin Doctors, but doesn't suck?
Q: when can a band use cheap-sounding electronics just as loyally as high-quality equipment and come out shining?
A: when it's Space Opera
There is virtually no uniformity to the sound of these two tapes, except for the common bond of weirdness. There are solid songs, bits of sound effects and poetry. The musical styles are all over the board, but the keyboard/drums/bass sound of the 70's 
are present (which I expected, considering Nathan's influences).
With 45 tracks total between the two tapes, and such varied sounds, it's hard to single out a few tracks to study, but there are 4 that stand out for me. On World War 8, "Virtuous" is a reflective instrumental that sounds a little like James Phillips' style, and "The Ant Dance" is as fun and minimalist as the title suggests. On Impressions, Soundtrack of, the garage scorcher "Emmett" is one of my personal faves.
As for the poetry bits, they're more interesting than the Stone Temple Pilots interludes, but I'm not a big fan of poetry, so I won't try to critique it. In any case, Space Opera is without a doubt one of the most interesting, asthetic and unpretentious projects to grace my demo collection.
Shortly after I started updating this website, Ryan of Space Opera happened to contact me, regarding some floppy disks I had borrowed from him.
It was a fortunate occurance for me, because by this time, there were 4 more SO tapes available, and Ryan immediately gave me copies of them all.
The Bestest, as the title suggests, is a collection of tracks selected from the previous 5 tapes. 27 tracks in all, it's a good overview of their music, and includes "Bull By The Horns", which has become my favorite SO tune lately.
Heroes 75 and 76Has a really cool cover that is made to resemble a comic book, and a comic page is inside.
The songs don't really have anything to do with the comic concept, but the apparant obession with monkeys continues with the simply-titled "Monkey".
Ryan says that the Haircut is his favorite, and I don't really dislike it, but it strikes me as one of the least cohesive album in the collection. "Espadrille" is a sorta-surf instrumental in swing time, "Funky Song With No Name" is... well, funky, and "Tard" is about as loud, gritty and muddy as SO get. The only commonality is the undertoned weirdness present on all of their projects.
Suitcase Men is the oddball of the bunch. There's only 10 songs, compared to an average of 19 on the others. The album art is various photos of suit-and-tie "Suitcase Men" on one side, and photographs of some guy (not a band member) dressed as a pimp on the other side. I also find the sound very different, although it's hard to put into words exactly why.
Altogether, the Space Opera library is an unusual collection of music, artwork and odd concepts. Very few of these songs, if any, could make it as Top 40 radio hits, and really that's a good thing.
contact c/o:
Ryan Hutchinson, 147 Spring St., Summerside, PEI, C1N 3G2
