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Friday Full-Length: West, Space & Love, West, Space & Love

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Go ahead and file under Øresund Space Collective, I suppose. And while you’re at it, pick up the pieces of my blown mind after realizing that it’s been six full years since the West, Space & Love album came out. Their self-titled debut (review here) was originally released under that banner, but immediately on its own wavelength. The uniting factor was the participation of synth specialist Scott “Dr. Space” Heller in the project, but actually, at the time, two-thirds of the outfit came from Sweden’s Siena Root — those being guitarist/sitarist KG Westman and drummer Billy “Love” Forsberg — so I suppose they were even more “file under” that band, if you want to go by the pure math. In terms of their approach though, well, I’ll say the album’s on the right Bandcamp. Perhaps the last song title says it best: “Sitars in Space.” The notion behind West, Space & Love as a project was that it should be a mostly acoustic psychedelic record. Of course, synth plays a heavy role, but with Westman‘s sitar, acoustic and electric guitars, and bass, as well as a variety of percussive instruments and more guitar helmed by Forsberg, there remains a strong undercurrent of the organic to the five included tracks on the ultra-manageable 44-minute LP. Though, you know, I say “LP” and I don’t think it was ever released on vinyl. Could it be time for a reissue?

Now’s as good as whenever, in that regard, though time doesn’t really matter with a release like this. It’s not like it’s going to go out of style. A spirit of exploration pervades — they take their improvisation-minded cues from their Øresund Space Collective parentage, to be sure; not that Siena Root at this point didn’t do their fair share of jamming — but again, the plane from which West, Space & Love‘s jams came was pretty much their own. And it was mellow. Extremely so. In my original writeup for the record, I talk about it behind a nighttime headphone record. I stand by that 100 percent, but I remember clearly the scenario I was talking about was being up late at night at Roadburn in the Netherlands when I first got this CD and listening to it there basically on west space and love west space and loverepeat for the whole weekend. It’s a freakout, but such a quiet one that it was just the perfect chillout to answer that kind of sensory overload. Six years later, the feeling is much the same.

Listening to “High Rise,” “Kafi (For Your Love)” and “Spirit Blues” on what would essentially serve as side A, the flow is impeccable. From the harder acoustic strum and percussive pulse of “High Rise” through the patient and graceful unfolding of “Kafi (For Your Love)” — every bit worthy of a comparison to Lamp of the Universe, and that’s not a line I’ll often draw — and the tracklist-centerpiece naturalism so prevalent in “Spirit Blues,” each player gets his moment to shine out from the three-piece. Whether it’s Love on “High Rise” and in the one-man-drum-circle during the second half of “Spirit Blues” or Dr. Space with the synth wash at the end of the opener or Westman‘s initial strum of sitar in “Kafi (For Your Love)” immediately taking my mind to The Beatles‘ “Love You To” — where it’s always a pleasure to go — the personality of each player is in full bloom throughout, and the manner in which they meld together to form something new is nothing short of remarkable.

And that continues into “Repetition” and “Sitar in Space,” both of which speak to a self-awareness on the part of their creators. It’s easy to imagine that the last two cuts, both utterly meditative in their approach and spacious beyond even what was brought to bear on the three tracks prior, came from later in the session. They seem to be that much more comfortable and settled into a methodology — especially the closer — but I know nothing about in what order these songs happened in the studio, so that’s just a narrative brought on by the evocative nature of the material itself. That is, that 22-minute stretch is so immersive and even unto its titles feels so conscious of what it’s creating that it’s easy to thread the story that it came after the initial explorations at the beginning of the record. For those interested more by general atmospheres than the circumstances of their creation, consider it emblematic of the pull West, Space & Love elicit generally, and the strength in terms of bringing ambience to life. Because while it is for the most part a quiet album, there’s no doubting the vibrancy of West, Space & Love from front to back. “Trippy” is overused as a descriptor, but there’s a genuine sense of journey in these songs for mind and spirit alike, and whether you let them wash over you or try and pick apart each hand-drum thud, synthesized swirl and sitar pluck, the resonance of the album’s entirety will continue long after play has stopped.

It was enough, I suppose, that Forsberg, Westman and Heller came together again in 2016 for West, Space & Love Vol. II (review here). It was a less acoustically-based session, and had the gag-track “Pig in Space” to pull the listener out of the otherwise hypnotic moment, but was still a worthy follow-up to the chemistry established here, and one hopes it won’t be the last time these three get together, however busy they might otherwise be. Forsberg remains with Siena Root, while Westman‘s contributions to 2009’s Different Realities (discussed here) would be his last with the band. He continues to focus on Hundusthani classical sitar music and has performances booked between next week and late September, when he’ll be in New York and Massachusetts both for select US appearances. His latest album, Sonashish, came out last year through Bihaan Music. Here’s a bonus raag from him just because I happened to be on his website and put it on:

Of course, Heller continues to pursue the outer reaches of the known cosmos with Øresund Space Collective, about whom writing has essentially become a means of doing myself a favor over the last several years, as I find their output always to be such a joy to put on and adventure with. I’ll say the same applies to West, Space & Love as well, which it’s been a thrill to revisit. I hope you feel the same way.

And as always, I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading.

Pouring coffee in the dark at four in the morning? What could possibly go wrong?

Sometimes I feel like the late-night/early-morning process of decision making is its own beast entirely, separate from the entire rest of the day. And then I remember things like the fact that I drove out of lunch the other day with my wallet on top of the car, losing it — which only sucks because it was a customized gift from The Patient Mrs. — as well as my drivers license, credit cards, debit card, insurance info, cash in pounds, euro and dollars, and several checks made out to cash, etc., and I remember that, no, I’m a fucking moron all the time. Doesn’t matter if it’s four in the morning or four in the afternoon. Points for consistency, I guess?

In any case, I emerged from the coffee-pour unscathed, though I still consider the oh-no-I-can’t-turn-on-the-light-because-I-might-wake-the-baby-who-is-behind-a-closed-door theory specious and ill-examined at best. Fate may have its way with me next time, but it’ll have to wait: this was the end of the pot.

It will be missed.

I’ve been up since two, which is pretty good, considering. Last night was 12:45, for example. I managed to go back to bed for an hour or so at five yesterday, and I may yet do the same this morning, but it’s basically an effort to be done with this stuff by the time The Pecan wakes up. That’s been sometime between five and six for the last month, and especially as we’ve been back and forth between Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Jersey — currently in the latter, until Sunday — my early-morning-get-up-at-4:30-or-five-or-six-and-write time has pretty much evaporated. I’ve made the best of it, and hopefully not too many typos along the way. Nothing is permanent. Someday, my son will wake up without screaming and make himself breakfast. Whether I’ll live to see it, well, let’s not be melodramatic.

By the way, in all the hubbub of traveling and dumbassery, I left my all my meds in Massachusetts. Remember last week when I talked about crying for no reason? Yeah. Tomorrow should be interesting.

Speaking of interesting, I’m kicking the can down the line again and pushing back the Quarterly Review another week. The reason? I’m just not ready. I don’t have Photoshop installed on The Silver Fox yet or a registered version of Word — the former used to making a banner, the latter for keeping track of word counts for the reviews so I don’t fly off the handle and do 500 words for everything — so that’s a thing, and I still have one or two more picks to include for a couple of the days. Getting that laptop stolen in the UK really fucked me up. I hope the dickweed who did the snagging got some decent heroin with whatever cash he got in exchange for it. I’d love to hear from (presumably) him.

So, with the Quarterly Review put off, next week has a lot of stuff up in the air. I’ll improvise like West, Space & Love, but here’s the basic formative plan I’m going from. I fully expect this will change:

Mon.: Saturnia review; Churchburn video.
Tue.: Great Electric Quest review.
Wed.: Black Moon Circle review.
Thu.: TBD.
Fri.: TBD.

Pretty vague. Sorry about that. I was hoping to pull it together on the Quarterly Review and just didn’t get there, so the stuff for the week after, which was half-planned as you can see above, has basically been bumped up. If I’m lucky, someone will feel like premiering something in all that. For what it’s worth, I’ve already got stuff planned as far out as July 31. Just not next week.

However, I remain certain this site won’t go without its due share of postery. There’s plenty out there to cover. To wit, I just checked my email and got asked to do two premieres next week. So things will shape up. I still need to look at Thee Facebooks messages as well. Oy.

Actually, why don’t I go do that. Plus it’s quarter after five, so The Pecan should be getting up imminently and I should put the first of today’s posts live.

And yup, there’s the call. Gotta run. Great and safe weekend, and please check out the forum and radio stream.

 

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