ONCE THERE WAS A TIME WHEN SPACE AND TIME WERE ONE

A collective comprised of members of a diverse range of bands such as Anekdoten (Nicklas Barker), Magnolia (Ronny Eriksson) and the Gösta Berlings Saga (Mathias Danielsson), Swedish band My Brother The Wind deliver their third album `Once There Was a Time When Space and Time Were One', and it's another fully improvised, reliable collection of heavy psych rock, space music and immersive Krautrock sounds. The results are always enjoyable, if sometimes lacking something truly thrilling, but genuinely lovely moments still emerge throughout the disc.

After an opening `Prologue' of psychedelic drones, phasing sounds and backwards effects, the meandering yet joyful `Song of Innocence - Part 1' smoulders with slow-burn electric guitar embers and murmuring bass in the manner of the most mellow moments of Agitation Free and the Oresund Space Collective. After being sucked into a whirling vacuum of spinning feedback, the band crash back to Earth with `Ufo'-era Guru Guru-esque howling raggedness driven home by incessant pounding drums from newcomer to the group Daniel Fridlund Brandt. `Into the Cosmic Halo' lurches back and forth in tempo with scuzzy early Hawkwind-like charm, but it's really just a framing for aimless guitar soloing. The more meditative `Misty Mountainside' is an Indo/raga rock- flavoured droning acoustic guitar respite, with hypnotic flute ruminations reaching for the heavens.

`Garden of Delights' is a slowly building twelve minute guitar jam that grows in intensity with nice middle eastern themes slowly emerging, but although the piece is probably twice as long as it should be, the blanketing of unsettling Mellotron choir in the finale satisfies. `Thomas Mera Gartz' is a groaning sustained-note electric guitar and chimes drone, the title track is another dreamy acoustic guitar raga with thoughtful bass interjections, and `Epilogue' is a brisk and sumptuous up- tempo Mellotron soaked beauty. Spirited acoustic guitar races alongside sprightly drumming, warm relentless bass and glorious Mellotron rises and falls on clouds of hallucinogenic bliss.

`Once There Was a Time When Space and Time Were One' ticks plenty of the right boxes in the genres mentioned above, but some stretches get a little monotonous or fail to truly engage. It also has to be said that the shorter, ambient and reflective moments are more interesting than the heavier overlong jams, and they're also disappointingly the shorter pieces on the album. Still, this is a nice album, and the fanciful hazy cover artwork just lifts it that little bit higher still!

A solid three star album.