Øresund Space Collective
West, Space and Love II

Does it still make sense today to talk about space music? I mean, does it still make sense to continue talking about it when the exploration of space and the cosmos seem to have definitively lost all their charm. Let's face it: people absolutely don't give a damn about going into space. There have been some rather clumsy attempts, in my opinion, to reverse the trend. For example, an incredibly expensive campaign of science fiction film productions: 'Gravity', 'Interstellar', 'The Martian'... Films that did quite well at the box office, but which in the end, besides not working in terms of propaganda, also turned out to be more or less mediocre cinematic episodes. Even the news, the official discovery of the presence of water on the surface of Mars, has changed things. Generally, people are not very interested in everything concerning space. Similarly, obviously, the majority of people, including myself (and I consider myself a person very fascinated and therefore interested in space exploration), are not at all informed about what the progress in the sector might be. Likewise, the media, including the most important ones, certainly do not cover the issue in any way.

This obviously does not mean that there are no new discoveries in the field of space and cosmos exploration, but these new discoveries are not something that can evidently attract the attention of those who do not have scientific expertise or can be difficult to understand. Thirdly, this is certainly not the least relevant of the three, however, people may surely find it interesting to send satellites around the cosmos or drones to explore and investigate the surface of Mars, but none of this is exactly as exciting as seeing a man walk on the lunar surface.

After all, what were the words used by Neil Armstrong? 'One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.' He certainly didn't mention drones or robots. Who cares about this junk. Do you know when and who was the last time to set foot on the Moon? It was Eugene Cernan. It was December 14, 1972.

I was born in 1984. I've practically never seen 'live' a man walking on the moon, and who knows if I'll ever see anything so exciting and incredible in my life. What we usually read in various magazines and newspapers about the conquest of the surface of Mars is garbage. Yes, there are a lot of theories about this, and studies, but nothing really concrete. Not to mention that among all these, there are situations that are revealed to be even gigantic frauds. This is the case of Mars One, the organization led by Bas Landsorp.

No one actually has a real plan to reach the surface of Mars and this not only because it would be a very expensive mission and clearly difficult to accomplish, but also because deep down no potentially interesting parties (and equipped with the necessary financial and technical means) see in this type of operation something really useful to 'be worth the risk'. There is no need for this type of propaganda, as there was during the Cold War, and without an important economic return, there is evidently no reason to carry out this operation. Not to mention establishing a permanent community, a base, something that today on a logistical level is certainly the subject of study, but nothing more than pure theory.

But of course, if you want to know what I think, I do not consider it impossible to reach the surface of Mars. Why not? I am sure that if the two superpowers, the United States of America and China, came to an agreement and decided to collaborate, they could surely succeed in this type of operation. Perhaps even with the assistance of private organizations (in this sense how not to mention Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX and probably the most important and brilliant 'mind' among the businessmen of our time) who would find an operation like this certainly useful in terms of advertising. As well as for those that would be the relationships with the institutional leaders of the powers involved. But at this moment there are no signs that something like this might happen. Moreover, speaking of international politics, if Barack Obama had achieved good relations with China and worked in that direction, Donald Trump seemed to have debuted in a completely different way. He directly attacked Beijing via Twitter, and for the first time, an American president had a phone call with the political leader of Taipei, Tasi Ing-Wen, something that happened for the first time in history since Jimmy Carter publicly declared that there was only one China, the one governed by Beijing.

Then. Why. I mean, in a purely conceptual sense, cosmic music and space rock took their inspiration also from these visionary, even revolutionary ideas that concerned space exploration and the possibility of discovering new unspoiled, even ideal, worlds that could be colonized, and at the same time considered this as a way to end, to break down all barriers in every possible sense (we are talking about something that happened between the sixties and seventies and in Europe divided into two parts), concerning political divisions, scientific development, and cohabitation between man and nature, concerning schemes and prejudices and moral rules of a society that loudly demanded a general emancipation; because space exploration meant something that at the same time was also a way to overcome a barrier in the limits of human development. Something that also had a spiritual content. An inner journey. Not exactly a kind of religion, therefore, although there were evident new age motives, and for this reason, something inevitably linked to spiritualism and social issues and claims.

On the other hand, it is known that, starting from the explosion of psychedelic music during the sixties, space rock and cosmic music found fertile ground initially and their ideal dimension in what were communal communities, the communes that were expressions of the various youth counter-culture phenomena that began to arise in the UK and the USA, and then spread throughout the western world between 1960 and 1970. In the same way, in the heart of continental Europe, kraut-rock developed in similar contexts and from the encounter between this US-made counterculture and the student movements of 1968 in West Germany, which was a class of young, intellectual listeners who opposed nuclear weapons, global pollution and were part of activism and anti-war protest groups. Meanwhile, the avant-garde music and minimalism of Americans La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Steve Reach was already a reality, music that already used drone sounds and loops, synthesizers, and something that could already be defined as music besides psychedelic also space-oriented. Originally conceived as a kind of form of free-art, this is how kraut-rock was born, a real musical genre with the birth of bands like Can and Cluster, until Popol Vuh, Tangerine Dream, Faust with the intensive use of synthesizers and advanced productions, led to the establishment of the term, 'kosmische musik.'

We are talking about a genre whose peculiarity is generally a form of expression by a collective and the expression of improvised jams, which still today constitutes a recurring format for those who play this type of music. The biggest realities of the genre, in fact, have mostly what we might define as consistent and static line-ups, but always constitute collectives where musicians come and go depending on various shows, concerts, and recording sessions. The first example that comes to mind in this sense and perhaps the most popular expression of the genre emerged in a period following the boom of kraut-rock, are certainly the Acid Mothers Temple of guitarist Kawabata Makoto (from Osaka, Japan), but obviously there are many realities of this type also in Europe. Especially in Northern Europe. One of the major realities among these is obviously the Oresund Space Collective (who take their name from the Oresund strait, which separates Denmark from Sweden), formed in April 2004 in the typical form of a collective composed of musicians from different countries, mostly Denmark, Sweden, America (United States, of course). The collective began to hold various jam sessions and improvisations, and each time the band was composed of different musicians, in a constant process of rotation and expansion of the line-up until the first release, a self-titled promo in a limited edition of thirty copies. The first chapter of a long series of music releases that the collective itself defines as 'Totally Improvised Space Rock!'

Recorded in Stockholm, Sweden, between December 4th and 6th, 2015, the latest album, 'West, Space, and Love II', is ideologically the sequel to a first chapter published on March 31, 2012, and consists of an acoustic recording with Siena Root with the use of acoustic guitars, sitar, manual percussion, and the use of synths. All improvised. Obviously. The recording sessions of the new album included two parts. The first between December 4th and 5th at Shadra and Root Rock Studio and involved the recording of bass and drum sounds. The second part was practically a live overdub session. Two at most and carried out between December 5th and 6th. Finally, the mixing, done by KG and Love. The album was clearly all recorded and mixed in analog. As could it be otherwise for true devotees of space music.

For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that the band currently consists of KG Westman (sitar, bass, Ibanez double-neck guitar, Hammond L100, synth), Love (drums, percussion, vocals, Roland SH1000), Dr. Space (custom modular synth, Korg monotron, Roland SH1000). But naturally, following the tradition of the collective, other musicians participated in the sessions and in particular added instruments like the violin, the extensive use of delay, and the santur (or santoor), a typical Iranian musical instrument with strings similar to the cimbalom or piano and played with two mallets. It is noteworthy that many of the percussion instruments played by Love are typical of oriental or even South American sounds, giving the various compositions an absolutely unpredictable character. The final result, in short, is certainly particular and at the same time easily assimilable and traceable to the kraut-rock genre, and in particular to one of the most productive, eclectic, and completely 'crazy' bands, the Tangerine Dream of Edgar Froese, whom we unfortunately lost last year, when he died due to pulmonary embolism. God bless him. Wherever he is now.

The eleven minutes of 'Floyd's Dream', consequently, are certainly a typical episode of evocative kosmische music consisting of a constant and repetitive, even hypnotic use of synths in a manner that might resemble 'Autobahn' by Kraftwerk and at the same time accompanied by the driving and rhythmic use of the first guitar and the storm of electric solos and use of delay that amplifies and extends the sound filling every possible space.

The album aims to explore and experiment every aspect of space rock and cosmic music. 'Khan Paan', with the evident use of santur and violin, reprises that ancient tradition of psychedelic rock music that always wants to look at the traditional sounds of the Far East. The groove of the track becomes increasingly enchanting as the minutes go by until the end when the electric guitar comes in, making the ending of the song fuller and typically kraut. '2002' is a brief instrumental composition dominated by the sound of synths on a substrate of driving drums and modular elements, loops, bass station, and the use of delay pedals. 'Pig In Space'! A moment of complete kraut madness! Space noise with a massive use of drum patterns and where the synth and percussion sounds somehow evoke samba and reproduce the grunts, 'oinks,' of these pigs launched adrift in space. And why not, after all? We've sent dogs, monkeys... Why not pigs? This also means breaking down the patterns, the boundaries so far marked in space exploration.

If 'Anybody Out There' can be defined as an almost meditative episode, where quiet reigns and typically makes you feel like floating in open space, where you look through the visor of your astronaut helmet at all the emptiness of space surrounding you and lose yourself in this contemplation without caring about the fact that your body is slowly drifting into the unknown, a metaphysical new age experience that can only end with a big question mark about what is your future; on the other hand, 'Oscillation in D Minor' and 'Time Compression' are in my opinion the two most successful pieces of the album and those that could be considered two modern classics of psychedelic space rock. Both songs are practically two true psychedelic journeys into space and at the same time an analytical and philosophical contemplation of the universe that surrounds us and what we carry within us. A transcendental experience in the Kantian sense where elements of Eastern culture are mixed and because conceived to be something improvised, also an episode of expressionist art and avant-garde music.

In the end, I don't know if I have also given some answer to the initial question. But who knows, maybe the answer might lie in this album. In the listening and the sensations that this album's music can suggest and transmit to listeners. 'West, Space and Love II' is an album that I certainly suggest to all kraut-rock, psychedelia, and obviously space music enthusiasts, and despite this completely impromptu and improvised nature, thanks to the skill of the Oresund Space Collective it is still a very good and compact work. On the other hand, returning to more extensive interest topics that transcend the mere musical interpretation, the fact that this work is completely improvised and inspired by the tradition of 'kosmische music' and at the same time paying attention to different international musical traditions and the eternal because always present oriental philosophy suggests that this collective continues to be inspired by causes and issues that are on the same conceptual plane as those that were the demands of the community and collectivism phenomenon of the sixties and seventies we have already mentioned. Of what was the era of space exploration. More than forty years separate us from the day when Eugene Cernan walked on the Moon and it's true, very likely governments, institutions, and organizations of all kinds, both public and private, worldwide, at this moment are not giving a particular push and new impetus for space travel and the breaking of new frontiers. I don't know. I would like to be able to give an answer, a detailed representation of what the current situation in the sector is, but perhaps I don't have the necessary knowledge and scientific expertise. What is certain it seems is that like me, there are still many people who have not stopped dreaming of space and that at the same time, although many things have changed since the sixties and seventies, things like those we commonly call 'ideologies' and that many pretend to be over and buried, still exist and constitute a genetic heritage of the human being as a thinking and political being, capable of making decisions and inevitably driven towards growth that is naturally positive. In this sense, a revolution has begun and is never over and continues to move forward and probably will never stop doing so. Perhaps it proceeds slowly. It is never radical and is not always violent, as Mao would have rightly defined it, at least apparently, because deep down the changes we each make and in our individuality are always violent. This is something you can touch with your hand, it is around you, you actively participate in it when you positively contact others, and it is within you, when you manage to find that cosmic balance (the term is not accidental) in all those inner disturbances and storms that plague your soul. Get a move on, guys, space is there just waiting to be reached and conquered. As our sweet and charming fellow traveler Buzz Aldrin would say, and whom I consider one of my spiritual guides, 'Get your ass to Mars!'