JOHAN RANDÉN
From Aural Innovations #40 (September 2008)
This is a really cool festival in an amazingly beautiful park in Gothenburg, Sweden. On this day the weather was just perfect and the sun was shining most of the day and no rain. I have no idea how many people showed up but it was a lot. The festival very professionally run and things stayed pretty close to on time and the sound was excellent. Five very diverse sounding bands but all in the progressive rock vein. A new young Swedish guitar player named Johan Randén opened the show at 15:00 with a set of blues, jazz fusion guitar instrumental stuff. He has the chops and had a great band backing him up. Reminded me a bit of Eric Johnson at times.
JOHAN RANDÉN
Next up was Moon Safari from the North of Sweden and they played about 70 minutes of very happy melodic progressive music. 12 string guitar on a lot of songs and dual male vocals. Too happy for me but great players.
MOON SAFARI
Next up was the Prog metal band DarkWater. They had a very strong singer and the lead guitar player could really rip it up but seemed to repeat himself a lot with the same melodic phrasing in many of the songs. For sure the heaviest band of the day.
DARKWATER
Anekdoten were the most famous band on the bill and had the largest crowd at 20:00, starting nearly 30 minutes late. The band are clearly moving in a totally new direction with the mostly female vocals, a bit of post rock melodic phrasing and much less aggressive music. The best tracks were for sure the old ones. They have their own style and sound and are totally unique. Great band.
Set list: Monolith, From Within, Richochet, 30 Pieces, In for a Ride, Sky about to Rain, Great Unknown, Nucleus, Gravity, Sad Rain
ANEKDOTEN
To end this great day was my band, the Øresund Space Collective. Sadly because of the curfew and Ankedoten taking a long time to set up and soundcheck and take their gear off we were cut short. We were to play a 90 minute set but ended up only getting 80 and running 10 mins past the curfew. While 50% of the crowd left after Anekdoten, still a core crowd of 300 or so were left and they totally were into it. The people up front were crazy and even knocked over the barrier (see picture as I was taking a picture of the audience). Anyway, we spaced them out with 3 long jams. Pity we had to stop as we were really just starting to fly and our last jam was for sure the coolest one. Anyway, a great day, great organization and a fun time by all.
Fans going crazy for OSC!