Slowly Toward The North – Freedom’s Children
Astra – Freedom’s Children
‘Slowly Towards The North’ originally came as a 2 part track on Freedom’s Children’s 1970 epic classic, ‘Astra’. The 2005 CD release by the RetroFresh record label combines the 2 parts into a 7 minute rockfest. The track sort of creeps out of the speakers as it starts with a gently swirling organ (courtesy of Nic Martens) playing over ominous storm-coming sounds. It is then joined by Julian Laxton’s guitar before Brian Davidson’s echo-ey vocals create an atmospheric desolation to the sound
The track then goes into full swirl as the organ spins around some primal drums and Davidson chants the song title over and over again while the guitar flashes like lightning across this stormy sound. And so we fade towards the end of the first part of the track. It then slides back into your consciousness with the organ sounding church-like while the drumming builds around the space-y vocals.
The song is everything one would expect from a Freedom’s track with hindsight, but back in the day, it was spaced out psychedelia that would have blown many a mind in South Africa at the beginning of the 70s. Some have said that ‘Astra’ was a concept album about the life of Christ although guitarist Julian Laxton has denied this (with the caveat ‘But who knows what was in Ramsay’s head when he wrote the songs’ – Ramsay being Ramsay MacKay, the band’s bassist and principal songwriter). Laxton also thought that the song could have been about MacKay’s longing to return to his native Scotland.
In an interview in 2012, MacKay explained that the idea for the album came from the 1969 moon landing and the line in ‘Slowly From The North’ that goes ‘Cannot get my way back down to you’ came from him wondering what would happen if the astronauts could not get down from the moon. This seems to accord with the kind of space feel to the song. This combined with the church like organ sounds makes one wonder why they didn’t call their album ‘Space Hymns’ instead of ‘Astra’, but then, they may have decided to leave that title for someone else to use.
Where to find it:
Astra – Freedom’s Children (1970, CD re-release 2005), Fresh Music, FRESHCD 145
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