Causa Sui - Return to Sky (2016)

Causa Sui are back with a new studio record, the successor to 2013's Euporie Tide, which consolidated the band as a crucial underground force in the European psych scene and spread their unique brand of warm-toned stoner rock to a wider audience. Return To Sky is a condensed piece of acutely experimental, yet immensely engaging, instrumental rock. Each of the album's five epics unfolds as a microcosm of the band's genre-transcending psychedelia at large, yet adds something different to the whole. There's a kind of musical metamorphosis taking place that s deeply ingrained in the band's natural flux by now: heavy, detuned riffs are transformed into wide, pastoral soundscapes, and fluid minimalism warped into swirling crescendos and back again. Occasionally the band even manages to sound turbulent, fuzzed-out yet strangely peaceful at the very same time. Whereas so much of today's psychedelic scene comes off as merely a tribute to a certain period of the past, Causa Sui seem to be on a different mission. More than any other record in their catalog Return To Sky declares their roots in the avant rock of the late 1990s - where different eras and genres merged into something that resonated as much with the present as it celebrated the past. It also reveals the fact that members of the band has had their hands in many different projects since the band s debut album in 2005: solo excursions into synthesizer music, collaborations with members of Sunburned Hand Of The Man and Tortoise as well as film soundtracks, guest spots with krautrock legends Faust and Damo Suzuki and various improv sessions. It has all worked a subtle influence on the kind of band they have become. Causa Sui's music is now more earthy and heavy than ever before, but it s ability to absorb everything from shoegaze and vintage Italian film music to spiritual jazz, afrobeat and minimalism into its fabric has matured as well. Never before has Causa Sui sounded as deep and mesmerizing as on this set.