OresundSpaceColletive

Hailing from Copenhagen, Denmark and with constant line-up changes we have the unique collective space band “Øresund Space Collective”, which has had over 30 different members from mostly Denmark and Sweden sharing the duties of performing with the band. Since the start in 2004 they´ve released countless studio and live recordings. Let´s hear what Scott Heller from the band had to say about this mega project.

                                          Courtesy: Øresund Space Colletctive (ØSC)


First of all, thanks for taking your time and answering the questions for us. Let us know how Øresund Space Collective came about?
 
DR Space- ØSC started off as just a jam project with the Danish band, Mantric Muse (Copenhagen) and the Swedish band, Bland Bladen from Malmö, Sweden. I had been playing with the Danish band Gas Giant but they decided to take a new direction and so I was no longer playing with them and wanted to keep playing music. ØSC was just some jam sessions for the first year and then in Feb 2005 we played the first concert, summer 2005 we recorded our first studio recordings, and in Jan 2006 we released our first record.


As we understand it, you alternate and switch band members from time to time to keep the project more “alive, fresh and kicking”. How did you come up with this “football team”-idea?


Dr Space- In the early days it was the same band for the first couple of years and then I started to invite cool musicians from bands that I was friends with including the guys from Gas Giant, Siena Root, Carpet Knights, The Univerzals, and many more. As for keeping it fresh, we are always trying new things and having new people come in gives new ideas all the time. 
 
You are also known for jamming and improvising the songs. How does this work in a live setting? Do you have a basic idea or chord structure from the soundcheck that you then flow with when playing or do you 100% improvise in the very moment?
 
Everything is always improvised. Live and in the studio. We do choose the key to play in and we might briefly discuss to do something slow and spacey or heavy or funky or jazzy… We don’t have any songs and once we have created the music on the records and live, we just move forward to the next experience and never look back. This latest tour we have played with a lot of guest musicians played extremely diverse shows one with banjo and guitar synthesizer, stuff we have never experimented with before.


You are also a mobile touring unit and we assume it must be a bit tricky to make sure that the current line-up is available, because most of you also play in many different bands?

IT can be tricky to set up a tour as I am in Portugal and some of the guys are in Norway and Sweden now. It is the best band we have ever had now but it will for sure change in the future as sometimes it is just too expensive to get everyone together. This tour we could not have our keyboard player Mogens with us and this is the first tour ever without him. The rest of the band has changed a lot over the years with me being the only constant member.


You play mostly instrumental music which can be described as long floating jams which doesn´t follow a clear song structure. Would you ever consider to perhaps do the vice-verse, create 5-6 songs with a clear definite and classical “intro-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus” kind of structure or would that be insulting to the bands improvising trademark status?
 
It is all instrumental. The only time it was not was when we played with Damo Suzuki! With the current band, we have amazing communication on the stage and we do actually create some pieces where we do come back to some themes but it is rare, so usually each jam is a long trip or journey to another place. It is so much fun to play this kind of music when the musicians are so amazing and creative.


There´s a long tradition of bands that jams and plays long instrumental flows. It´s boring to mention obvious bands, yet Hawkwind are perhaps one of the first “space rock bands” out there. Then there has been many “new waves” of instrumental rock and variations leading up to these very times. After the 80´s and 90´s hardrock, synth and grunge-scenes we got lot´s of new innovative bands like “Mogwai”, “Bark Psychosis”, “Explosions In The Sky” and “Directions” which all would normally fall under the then new epithet “Post-Rock”. Although mostly instrumental music, some of these bands incorporated vocals or the use of vocals as an “extra instrument”. What is it with instrumental music that affects the listeners compared with 3-minutes hitmusic?

Dr Space- Good question.. We only have one 3min song that appeared on a 7” and it is an off the wall country western instrumental! As for instrumental and longer songs, I think you have more time to develop ideas and create a journey or flow to take the serious listener to some very interesting places and perhaps forget what is going on around you completely, if you can get totally absorbed, where as this can’t really happen with a 3mins song as it is over too fast.


You have also released many official live recordings from your concerts. Do you record all of your concerts or do you record only select dates and how do you decide which one´s are good enough to be released? 
 
We do record all the concert and put them all up on the www.archive.org and we try make high quality multitrack recordings of as many shows as possible. We have made 32 releases and only about 6 official live ones. We could release many more but try to limit this so it is not too overwhelming.
We have started a subscription at bandcamp now where people pay between 6-10€/month and there I have been sharing many more live mulitrack mixed recordings with our real hardcore fans…


Since you first started this mega project what has changed most during all these years and vice-verse what has been kept intact and solid?
 
DR Space- What has changed the most is the people playing. Besides Mogens and myself, none of the people we started the project play with us anymore. The line up was more or less very similar in the early days but the last years, the studio line ups have been very different and a few members are changing here and there in the live line up but we have a really incredible band at the moment for the live shows, so it is most of the same folks.

Our approach to the music, just set up and play without too much though, has stayed the same. I think everyone has become better at improvising as well.
 
You have toured in Europe for many years. Which concerts has been the most memorable and is there any countries or continents that you still would like to play?


We have played all over Europe. Our best audiences are in Hamburg, when we play the space boat every year and Finland. Finland concert always seem to be very special. This tour we played in Poland, Latvia and Lithuania for the first time but sadly, these were not great experiences for us. The Warsawa concert was great though, musically.


Some of our most magical shows have been in Dragens Hule, where we played a lot in the early days. Freak Valley Festival, Roadburn Festival, the Spaceboat in Hamburg. These were all amazing…. Also 2018 in Helsinki and Tampere we played killer shows..


One advantage with instrumental music is that it can be used in a “non-political way” yet be political without it being political. You could for example tour otherwise “closed countries” like North Korea as instrumental music is not seen as any threat as ordinary songs and bands can be looked upon as. Have you ever tried to play countries that most bands can not play?

Dr. Space- I would say we have gone to quite a few unusual places that most bands do not play like Macedonia, Bulgaria, Latvia, and Lithuania. We had an invite to play in India but sadly this fell through. We could tour the same places every year but for us, part of the adventure of getting out there is to go to new places.


Alright. Last question for this time. What does 2019 holds for the collective in terms of live concerts and new recordings?


Dr Space- Our May June 2019 tour was a lot of fun and we played some really interesting clubs and countries but sadly, we ended up losing too much money in the end. I don’t think we will play more concerts in 2019, sadly. For 2020 we will almost certainly play less concerts unless we can get better fees. We made 7 multitrack recordings from these dates and played some amazing shows so for sure the fans will get some more live concert recordings and the next studio album, Experiments in the Subconscious is due out in Jan 2020.
Many thanks for taking the time to answer our questions! Keep on floating!


You are welcome.


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