Singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Jason Pierce -- aka J Spaceman -- has been a driving force in forward-thinking, hypnotic music with Spacemen 3, Spiritualized, and on his own. Pierce founded Spacemen 3 in 1982 with Pete Kember, and over the course of albums such as 1987's The Perfect Prescription and 1989's Playing with Fire, the band crafted a spacy, narcotized sound inspired by the Velvet Underground, La Monte Young, and Steve Reich, and used the motto "taking drugs to make music to take drugs to." Pierce expanded on that sound in the '90s with Spiritualized, giving the group a symphonic majesty on works like 1997's masterpiece Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space and 2001's Let It Come Down. ~ Heather Phares