(((O))) Review: Øresund Space Collective – Alotta Hella Down In Estrela

Space…the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Øresund Space Collective, and here on what is their thirty fifth release they aim to take you further than ever before. Don that space suit people, we’re going on a trip. It’s a mighty long one but ever so slightly more interesting than being stuck on one of Elon Musks spaceships to Mars with only Katy Perry and a bunch of investment bankers for company.

First, we’re off to shake our backsides and shimmy along with some aliens at the space disco. See, that’s the beauty of instrumental music like this. You can make any old shit up and someone will dig it. Let’s get down for the next 49 minutes (yep, you heard that right. It’s like an album within an album!) to the crazy space sounds of our hosts. Douglas Adam’s would be proud and have them as the warm up act to Disaster Area live at the restaurant at the end of the universe. Of course, that initial burst of photon energy can’t last for the whole of the album within an album and soon it slopes off into a lovingly crafted psych funk odyssey. Space-tacular!

The next track will probably see you to Venus at least as it expands ever outwards into the nebula. More Spock on mushrooms than HAL on cocaine, its undulating course never once sending you to the cryogenic sleep chamber. This is the sound of space pirates heading through clusters of stars, playing ping pong with asteroids, whilst simultaneously looking for green skinned aliens to share your space tobacco with.

Of course, the fun can’t last forever and the second half of our journey takes us into more serious noodling territory with Weberian Bass taking on a more esoteric approach. The sound of entering the black hole, its slow, inexorable fall swallowing you into a splendidly far out finale.

Imagine if this lot bumped into Ozric Tentacles on their quest into outer space. Well, that’s what you get with Tangled Foot Badger. We’re no longer grooving and jiving along the space corridors of power. You’ve finally reached inner space, man. It’s like outer space but inside you yeah? Far out, and not just far outer space. You feel like you’ve been here a lifetime yet only 6 minutes of time has passed. Time is irrelevant now, and distorted beyond all manner of recognition. Indeed, it’s unsure who would actually sit this whole journey out in one sitting aside from this crazy reviewer but we are here now, in the void. 9 minutes have passed (there’s another 18 minutes to go). You may as well spark up that space tobacco if you have any left.

After all that you really do need something to come back down to earth either, and just maybe Echoes Ambientic will do that for you. After sitting through nearly two hours of music, adrift in your space capsule far above the world, ground control is calling for some solid ground. There may not be much of that on offer but it is a rather pleasant end to what has mostly been a splendid trip.