Off:Oresund Space Collective

[Jon Jarrett]

On Tue, 16 Nov 2004, SHLL (Scott Heller) wrote:

> I know a lot of people out there in the Hawkwind musical realm would
> like to hear about a new project that I have started. It is called the
> Øresund Space Collective (www.oresundspacecollective.com). It is
> musicians from Malmö and Copenhagen (the Øresund bridge connects the
> two cities) and we get together as often as we can to make free form
> space rock improvisations. It contains members of Mantric Muse, Bland
> Bladen, Gas Giant and the Carpet Knights. We have had so much fun that
> we will start to play concerts next year as well and maybe record a
> CD. Anyway, we have a few hours of jams up on our web site. I would
> love to hear any comments people have..

        There's a *lot* of material there :-) Given the mentions of Gas
Giant above I was surprised how jazzy it is, mostly down to an excellent
and clearly jazz-based drummer I think. More Quarkspace/Melting Euphoria
than Das Ludicorix therefore despite being essentially the same aim as the
latter project. I don't really go much on Quarkspace, finding them rather
sterile on what little I've heard, but this is more like my idea of
fun. Not to say I dopn't wish for a solid blanga riff or chord sequence to
get set up at times, but the patches when all the musicians were attuned
enough to jump from idea to idea with each other are worth a good deal of
waiting, especially as the `hold music' is so pleasant.

        If this stuff was going out onto disc, a whole load could be done
with editing; not brutal excisions, but I'm thinking of possibly the best
Das Ludicroix track, an epic called `Frozen Other (My Wings Are Like a
Shield of Steel)', which came out of a 22-minute piece which did, unlike a
lot of DL pieces, manage to change direction entirely midway through and
this is the main reason why it's so blinding; but the other reason is that
Larry edited out a lot of the indecisive wandering from the middle where
the lead guitarist tried out new shapes to fit in the space and developed
the one he eventually settled on for a while till he'd worked out its full
range. Makes the transition sound a lot more unexpected and startling. Is
this cheating, though? I mean, the uncut version is quite fun too...

        Anyway, if *I* were creative director I'd be trying to make it
heavier, but not everyone's tatses go that way obviously or Quarkspace
would have no following, and I'd recommend having a go at `Feet', `Flying
Free' and `Tolkien Jam' especially. Yours,
                                           Jon

n/p: I dread to think. Benedict is playing with children's television
websites. My time will soon come...
--
                Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College, London
    jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk/ejarr01 at students.bbk.ac.uk
  "As much as the vision of the blind man improves with the rising sun,
       So too does the intelligence of the fool after good advice."
       (Bishop Theodulf of Orleans, late-eight/early-ninth century)