Öresund Space Collective ~ Öresund Space Collective
Öresund Space Collective is a multi-national band, incorporating members from Norway, Denmark and the USA. They play, in their own words, a "Free Form Improvised Space Rock Music", this meaning that they get together and just jam freely, within the frames of Space Rock, recording their achievements. Well, if this album is representative of that, then I'll just have to consider that this band has developed an immense tightness between its members, a total understanding of each other musicality speaking. Only this way would it be possible to release such an album as this one, where the tracks are well constructed and seem like results of much trained rehearsals.
This is totally Space Rock, as all the instruments transport the listener to those musical fields. From the guitars to the keyboards and the paraphernalia of bizarre audio "noises" that are thrown in the mix, many of them of a percussive nature.
Being a totally instrumental album, there are strong connections to some of the more spacey parts of Ozric Tentacles (mainly the guitar and some inorganic sound effects) and Ship of Fools, but also to Hidria Spacefolk or even some Hawkwind tendencies, while the keyboards strangely (yet only occasionally) draw close tangents to the The Doors keys sound (just listen to some keys parts in the track Consumed by the Goblin). The drumming is competent and a bit more "direct" than the rest of the band, helping to keep the resulting sound balanced and focused.
The band takes its time to develop the tracks, and in 3 of those it really expands that time to a mark above the 14 minutes, which allows the listener to levitate through a star-filled void that the music helps create... like good space rock is supposed to, well... at least this specific style of Space Rock.
Like First Band From Outer Space or Ship of Fools, Öresund Space Collective keeps things completely and uniquely on the Space Rock side of things, with the correct and usual use of slightly psychedelic sounds that come in the form of sonic effects oddities, which makes the album not as much diversified as the majority of progheads want to (like myself, for instance). But for the fringe of progsters that have a thing for the purest form of Space Rock, and especially that which was able to transport this sounding to contemporary grounds, this album will be a swell discovery, that I am sure of.
Tracks
Credits
Magnus
guitars, effects, synths
Sabana
guitars, effects
Dave,
Michael
bass
Scott
synthesizer
Ola
Fender Rhodes, synthesizers
Mogens
synthesizers
Soren
drums
Reviewed by Nuno - You can read this review and thousands of additional reviews on http://www.proggnosis.com - the web's largest database of progressive rock and fusion.