Lazer Guided Melodies is the debut studio album by English space rock band Spiritualized. The album was recorded by the inaugural line up of the band, consisting of Jason Pierce (vocals, guitars), Mark Refoy (guitars), Will Carruthers (bass), Jonny Mattock (drums) and Kate Radley (keyboards) from 1990 to 1991, and mixed by Pierce in London in January 1992. The album was first released on Dedicated Records in March 1992, on cassette, Compact Disc and Vinyl (2 x LP, with initial copies containing an additional free 7").
Lazer Guided Melodies is unique in Jason Pierce's oeuvre as it simultaneously explores motorik, minimalist music, and space rock while subtly using "meticulously detailed, layered instrumentation, the sumptuous deployment of horns and strings" to create cinematic, textured, and deeply narcotic soundscapes. Pierce reported that the album cost £3800 to produce.
Critic Simon Reynolds wrote in his Melody Maker review of the album:
Spiritualized's music quivers with Apollonian attributes – airiness, fleetness, radiance, serenity ... At times, Spiritualized recall the Kraut version of freeway rock known as motorik, in particular Neu ..."Run" is all about the exhilaration of cutting loose, of goalless propulsion ... "If I Were with Her Now" is throbbing motorik too ... swathed by scintillating guitar chimes like the world whooshing by ... Along with motion, Spiritualized's other consummate metaphor for release is ascension. "Step into the Breeze" makes me think of a Wiltshire water meadow or somesuch pastoral bower of bliss ... "Symphony Space" [is] an amorphous flux of orchestral resonances that hover and ache, swim and brim, for a small eternity. The sound of heaven ... At times, Spiritualized are making 21st century gospel.
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