Øresund Space Collective - "It's All About Delay"
(Transubstans 2006, trans026)
Øresund Space Collective - "It's All About Delay"
(Transubstans 2006, trans026)
From Aural Innovations #35 (January 2007)
Wow!! Talk about a follow up album that blows away an excellent debut! For those not in the know, Øresund Space Collective are an all instrumental, all improvisational space rock collective comprised of Danish, Swedish and American musicians from such bands as Mantric Muse, Gas Giant, Bland Bladen and others. The band's debut CD was released earlier this year and was an impressive set of instrumental space rock. But on the 2-CD It's All About Delay, the band is clearly tighter and more in tune with each other, as many of these improvised pieces have a definite composed feel, and there are tracks that ROCK much harder than anything heard on the first album. Total Space Rock, but with a Progressive feel, this will easily make my best of 2006 list. The tracks range in length from 5 - 25 minutes, so you know these guys are really stretching out.
Disc one includes 8 tracks, the highlights being the opening and closing tunes, with a mind bending assortment of groove laden jams sandwiched between. But the 12 minute "Rolling" and 10 minute "In Her Majesty's Secret Saucer" are both powerhouse cosmic rockers that are so structured from beginning to end that it boggles the mind to realize they're improvised. Truly stunning and SMOKIN' playing from all. "Shaved Cortex" is another hot improv, featuring 15 minutes of jamming hard rock guitar, surrounded by a sonic wall of stratospheric synth work. The rest of disc one consists of killer deep space rocking jams with beautifully bubbling and tripping space guitars, colorfully cosmic synths, and keyboards that often add a progressive rock edge to the music.
Disc two consist of four loooong tracks, the shortest of which is 15 minutes. The standout is the 26 minute "Jupiter Flyby", dedicated to the memory of the late Doug "Dr Synth" Walker of the long lived American underground space rock band, Alien Planetscapes. The track journeys along in mellow cosmic space for nearly half its length… just tripping along and exploring… until finally taking off and settling into a steady rocking groove for the duration. "Alien Strip Club" and "Chris Ice Sack" are both lengthy head boppin' funky cosmic alien groove jams. And "The Tony Blair Witch Crocket Project" winds things down as one of the more laid back trippy tracks on either CD, with an easy paced slightly Reggae beat to it.
All in all a mind blowing set! If Particle can be so popular with the jam band crowd, having the space rock tendencies that they do, then OSC (though completely space rock) would definitely go over really well with that crowd too. They've got that GROOVE that the jam band fans dig so much. Ah well… just dreaming of space rock opportunities. The CDs also come housed in a DVD case with out-a-sight artwork by Ed Unitsky, making for a really beautiful package. So turn up the volume, turn down the lights, 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… BLAST OFF!!!
For more information you can visit the Øresund Space Collective web site at: http://www.oresundspacecollective.com.
There are still LOADS of mp3's to be downloaded there!
Reviewed by Jerry Kranitz