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Artist
Freedom´s Children
12+ albums
Progressive rock
about
It all began one manic weekend in 1970 in a recording studio in Johannesburg - and when it was over Astra, one of the greatest rock albums to ever come out of South Africa, had been born. While the cream of the country's finest bands were strutting their stuff at a rock festival at the 'Out of Town Club' a few kilometres away, Freedom's Children were hard at work laying down the tracks for what was to become their seminal album - a powerful symbol of the rock creativity that flourished in South Africa in the early 70s. It took three days to completed album, from recording to final mix, but little did anyone involved in the project realise then that what had happened over that magic weekend would live on more than three decades later. Said Nic Martens, one of the engineers for Astra who also played organ on the album, in an interview in July 2000: "What many are unaware of, is that Astra was recorded from a Friday night, to the Monday morningÖon a four track Studer, eight fader Siemans valve mixer, an echo plate, with some help from a Lesley amp and a modified echo box." This may sound archaic today when powerful software is freely available for anyone with the technical ability to create music using a PC. Seen in context, this makes Astra, if it is possible, even more remarkable. Not only did the album capture for posterity the unique sounds - dubbed "astral music" or "acid rock" - of arguably South Africa's finest band ever, but it also caught the mood of the drugs infu
