Over the course of his long career,
Sonic Boom's unvarying desire to explore the beauty and power of repetition through hypnotic, sometimes abrasive sound made him a legendary figure. Whether utilizing guitars and drug imagery as part of the influential group
Spacemen 3, digging into electronic noise and avant-garde sounds with the
Experimental Audio Research collective, or fronting his vintage synth-driven pop unit Spectrum, his devotion to his aural ideals earned him an impressive following in the late '80s through the '90s. He turned his focus toward production and collaboration after that, working with important artists like
Panda Bear and
MGMT and underground artists like
Cheval Sombre. In the late 2010s, he returned to making music, collaborating on an EP with
No Joy in 2018 and two years later releasing the quintessentially hypnotic
All Things Being Equal.
While attending art college, Rugby, England native Pete Kember teamed up with
Jason Pierce to form
Spacemen 3, recording a demo tape in 1986. After signing to Glass Records, the group recorded their debut LP, Sound of Confusion, for which Kember adopted the name Peter Gunn. By the time of their follow-up EP, Walkin' with Jesus, he had rechristened himself
Sonic Boom, keeping the pseudonym for the duration of his career to date. In 1990, he issued an album under the
Sonic Boom name, Spectrum; when
Spacemen 3 broke up soon after, Kember recycled the Spectrum title as the name of his new band. Spectrum debuted with the full-length Soul Kiss (Glide Divine) in 1992, and released two more LPs (
Highs, Lows & Heavenly Blows and
Forever Alien) as the decade progressed. Spectrum also issued many singles and EPs, as well as collaborations with
Silver Apples and
Jessamine.
Sonic Boom was also the driving force behind the avant-noise
Experimental Audio Research project, a loose configuration of musicians including
My Bloody Valentine's
Kevin Shields and
Techno Animal's Kevin Martin, among others. That group released many records over the last half of the '90s, and resurfaced for one album,
Worn to a Shadow, in the mid-2000s, a time when Kember was more likely to be guesting or producing someone else rather than making music on his own.
During the 2000s, he worked with
Füxa,
the Warlocks,
Magnétophone,
Dean & Britta,
Cheval Sombre,
Sunray, and
the Flowers from Hell, both as a performer and producer. His return from the fringes of the alternative scene occurred when
MGMT hired him to produce their high-profile second album,
Congratulations, in 2010. Afterwards, he continued working steadily, adding his hypnotic magic to records by
TEEN,
Cheval Sombre,
Panda Bear, and
Moon Duo, and collaborating on a heavily electronic 2018 EP with shoegaze revivalists
No Joy. A couple years before that, he had begun working on a set of instrumentals done on modular synths. Despite receiving assurance from his longtime friend
Tim Gane (of
Stereolab fame) that the songs were good enough to release, Kember shelved them. After a move to Portugal in 2018, he revisited the tracks and added vocals. This time he deemed it ready, and
Carpark issued
All Things Being Equal in 2020. The typically hypnotic and uniquely sunny album featured collaborations with
Panda Bear and
Britta Phillips. A collection of Kember's synth-heavy remixes of songs from the album -- plus two tracks that were released exclusively in Japan -- soon followed. Titled
Almost Nothing is Nearly Enough, the album was issued by
Carpark in April of 2021. ~ Jason Ankeny & Tim Sendra