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ÖRESUND SPACE COLLECTIVE: Öresund Space Collective

Release

Style

Öresund Space collective is a group of Danish, Swedish and American musicians, formed in April 2004 and getting together as often as possible, to play free-form improvised space rock music. The core of the collective features members of the Danish Mantric Muse and Gas Giant, as well as the Swedish band Bland Bladen. The idea behind the project is to compose ‘space rock music’ by improvisation during jam sessions, with a lot of different musical flavours in each session. They include influences from rock, reggae, jazz and funk as well. The Öresund Space Collective records all of their jam sessions and makes them available for the fans on their website in MP3 format. Currently there’s more than 20 hours on music material on their site categorised by style. For 2006, the band will release a CD-R, that also can be found as a FLAC download on the worldwide web. This album contains some of the best of their jam sessions, that have been edited and enhanced. Furthermore, ÖSC hopes to play many concerts in 2006.

The music on this album reminds me of Ozric Tentacles. “Faked it all the way” has a cosmic feel where the keyboards and synths take the lead, filled up with nice guitar melodies. It’s a calm and peaceful song, great as an opener for the CD. “Consumed by the goblin” is a long song with the same ingredients, but you can hear it swelling to a climax with experimental drum-patterns and varied guitar work. The third track, “ÖSC Bolero”, is an album-filler that couldn’t hold my interest for long. “Falling stardrops” is more experimental with lots of swing. The song has some good effects and a nice melodic cosmic atmosphere. “Grab a crab” is a bit more into reggae, but after a while changes into Space-rock style with lots of effects on the guitar and synths. “Moonhead”, with its 2:29 minutes, is the shortest composition on this album and is based on a mix of cosmic sounds, but less on musical structure. It’s just a nice intro for the upcoming “Sundown”. This is the longest song on the album and starts with the same cosmic feel as “Moonhead”, but with more musical structure. First, it’s the synth- & keyboard work that takes the lead to make room after a while for the guitar and drums.

For me, the longer songs on this album are the most impressive ones, but it’s a little bit too experimental for any prolonged listening. The album and music of ÖSC may be appreciated by many Ozric Tentacles-fans I suppose, but eventually you’re only going to use this record as background music for your daily household work, probably.

Musicians

Faked it all the way (6:21)
Consumed by the goblin (14:51)
Ösc bolero (5:22)
Falling stardrops (15:46)
Grab a cab (7:15)
Moonhead (2:29)
Sundown (17:39)

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Last updated: 17 februari 2006 .
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