Monday, June 16, 2008

Astro Can Caravan-21st Century Drifting Episode,2005+Questral Places,2003,CDs,Finland


Absolutely fantastic free jaz meets RIO meets exp. funk from Finland by a band having interconnections with Aavikko,Pharaoh Overlord,etc.Reminding Sun Ra's cosmic jazz excursions blended with Magma RIO weirdness.
"Highly experimental, with one foot solidly in the RIO camp and the other in outer space, Astro Can Caravan is an unconventional mix of large ensemble post-Sun Ra cosmic jazz, Magma-influenced Euro-fusion and Herbie Hancock/Miles Davis-styled avant-jazz funk. The 20 members of ACC (most of whom are apparently Finnish) all display a consummate musicianship and a keen awareness of the intricacies of ensemble playing throughout the ten tracks on 21st Century Drifting Episode, and in the process virtually create a new sub-genre one might call "big band space rock." The uncanny mesh of horns (trumpet, trombone), winds (sax, oboe, clarinet), guitar, bass, synthesizer and four percussionists, in addition to being unusual when transposed to the context of space rock, creates some undeniably astounding altered states of consciousness if listened to for extended periods of time. The more overtly Arkestra-influenced pieces ("De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium" and "Kohoutek") are brilliant, if not wholly original, exercises in solar jazz, in some ways extending, though not surpassing, the experiments in cacophony and atonalism that Sun Ra pioneered on Heliocentric Worlds. But ACC is quite capable of rocking the house, too, as both "Meteor Shower Geel" and "Mad Oracle" show. The up-tempo pace allows for some dynamic jamming where the synthesizers and saxes literally race each other as if they were on some intergalactic speedway. Imagine if Sun Ra's Arkestra were composed of members of Amon Duul II and Can - 21st Century Drifting Episode is the kind of album he would've done. Like most "difficult' music, you'll have to listen to it at repeated intervals in order to truly appreciate the thorough-going nonconformist approach that Astro Can Caravan adopts - especially on a piece like "The Scale of Anubis" - but rest assured that 21st Century Drifting Episode will clear out the cob webs in your CD collection and will probably find a place of distinction there in the near future."
Charles Van de Kree / Aural Innovations #32 (November 2005)

Astro Can Caravan were formed, according to their short-on-info website and Myspace, in 2001 in Kuopio in Finland by Otto Eskelinen, Pharaoh Pirttikangas, Tomi Kosonen and Tuomas Eriksson. The band has gone through a lot of personnel changes ever since, with at least 35 people that have played in ACC in some line up or another.According to Pentti Dassum from ACC, the 2007 line up of ACC is: Otto Eskelinen, Pharaoh Pirttikangas, Rasmus Pailos, Jusu Berghäll, Tuomas Eriksson, Tuomo Kuure, Pauli Lyytinen, Tomi Kosonen and Pentti Dassum ("give or take a few people, depending on the traveling distance... we live around finland, on a radius of ca 600 km from each other"). ACC are as Crucial Blast puts it a “jazz / prog / abstract / free-skronk-noise collective/orchestra”. Their albums 21st Century Drifting Episode and Questral Places will please listeners into jazz and avant-rock, and who like rhythmic and groovy textures, varied instrumentation and variety and richness of sound.
Thanks to Pentti Dassum for the help in compiling this biography.
==Assaf Vestin (avestin)== From ProgArchives.com
visit theit website here
get those both here

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

thanx for this great music.

where is track 11 from "21st century drifting episode" coming from???

Anonymous said...

thanks, what's track 11?