Forever Alien is the third studio album by British space rock band Spectrum, a project led by Peter Kember under the pseudonym Sonic Boom. It was released in August 1997 by Space Age Records. After the band's preceding EP Songs for Owsley (1996) moved them away from guitar-oriented music and towards electronic music, Forever Alien furthered this approach considerably, as Kember aimed to create a predominately electronic album that sounded organic and analogue in style. The record is dominated by vintage analogue synthesizers, including the EMS VCS 3 and EMS Synthi AKS. Kember had become fascinated by the synths as he felt they presented him with more musical possibilities than guitars. The resulting album fuses psychedelic music with influences from the 1960s electronic music of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. "Feels Like I'm Slipping Away" was released as a single. Although Forever Alien did not chart in either the United Kingdom or United States, it was a modest radio success in the US, and received acclaim from critics. Musicians such as Helena Hauff and Ekoplekz have since cited it among their favourite albums. Will Carruthers joined Spectrum on their 1997 tour in support of the album. Background In 1994, Spectrum released the album Highs, Lows and Heavenly Blows, which explored atypical compositional structures and musical scales. Following its release, lead member (and former Spacemen 3 member) Peter Kember, who used the pseudonym Sonic Boom, entered the band into a short hiatus as he resumed working on other musical projects. Spectrum reconvened in 1996 for A Pox on You, a collaboration with Seattle band Jessamine, and also released the Songs for Owsley EP in late 1996. The EP was named in tribute to LSD manufacturer Owsley Stanley, and moved Spectrum away from guitar-oriented music and towards a keyboard-dominated direction, making use of synthesiser distortion, predicting the musical style of Forever Alien, which also incorporated the songs found on Songs for Owsley. The EP ranged from the "goofy and threatening" semi-title track "Owsley", with heavily distorted vocals and noise elements, to the calm instrumental "Liquid Intentions." Spectrum followed Songs from Owsley with the recording of Forever Alien, their first non-collaborative album in three years. Recording and production Kember's vision for Forever Alien was to create a predominantly electronic album that did not sound "super sequenced and block-y," and aimed to bring to the album "some of the flowing stream of effects" he was