Hedersleben
Upgoer

LA RECENSIONE

Short review, conceived with the intent of making the mouth water for space & krautrockers who are certainly not lacking in DeBaserworld.
Hedersleben is a Californian space rock band that reached their first album in 2013, with the most psychedelic Pink Floyd and Hawkwind in mind. "Upgoer" champions the Floyd's penchant for controlled chaos in the style of Saucerful Of Secrets, meaning the famous initial and central sections, before gliding towards the raga rock of Hawkwind with an eye on the more modern sound of Porcupine Tree, not without recalling the lessons of Outskirts Of Infinity and Lepton Shoddy.
Thus, it is not the organized structure of Pink Floyd from the Dark Side/Wish You Were Here period that prevails, so to speak, but rather a structured mix of the two attitudes—free-form psychedelia and space rock—without touching on the progressive, nor using rhythm as the Orb do. The resulting form is that of an "apparent" and controlled jam, maintained in the compositional path of the piece but rather free within the spaces allowed to the various sections.
In truth, this is a hotly debated topic among fans of kraut, space, and psychedelia: the free structure of Faust's pieces doesn't find true correspondence in the compositions of Can, for example, which are overall less improvised, and Hawkwind's space rock has always been characterized by the substantial absence of a true "free form," apart from a few sporadic examples at the beginning of their discography.
The balance between improvisation, (rock) song, and organized soundscape is a topic of evaluation and development of the modern psychedelic genre, but it is evident that even the most imaginative new wave has often been involved in it (I'm especially thinking of the famous "John Coltrane Stereo Blues"). The modern ambient/psychedelic scene is dense with approaches that are also quite different from each other (Dark Sunny Land, Rad Kjetil, Josh Lay, Stroller Inst., Svarte Greiner, Heroes Ø DeLuxe, We Fly High, Ejzenstejn) and Hedersleben stands out as one of the most successful attempts at rationalizing something that doesn't always have a recognizable form. In this sense, the fundamental lesson is always in the synthesis of Pink Floyd and Hawkwind, without forgetting the fundamental oriental and free openness of Gong (on the famous triple of Glastonbury, the craziest are them and the Edgar Broughton Band).
Happy listening to space rock friends.