On the four planets that orbit their warm star, a few hundred terran colonists have built their new homes, pioneers, lost thousands of light-years away from the home world…
Causa Sui is the sound of molten rock on a far away world, of lava streams and eruptions that spout their waste high above the atmosphere of these almost dead worlds out into the cold reaches of space.
Their Pewt’r Sessions 3 album is made up of three improvised tracks of mind-blowing cosmic otherworldliness that defy gravity. The five members play a heavy blissed-out psychedelic jam that could draw parallels with bands such as Gnod, The Cosmic Dead and Electric Moon, but also stretching back further in time to Krautrock legends such as Ash Ra Tempel.“Abyssal Plain” has a rolling drum rhythm that carries the momentum of the piece. Heavy guitars soon die down into flowing melodies as these space pioneers go in search of new worlds. This is eight and a half minutes of pure out there, and at one point I almost thought I was listening to recordings from 1972. It’s melancholy and sighs along over its drum pattern before slowly returning to the dark void it was born in. “Eutopia” is a slight piece that brings the sound closer to Saucerful of Secrets-era Pink Floyd. Organ chords hang under melodic bass riffs and again the drums rumble around. The guitar chords ring out as a slightly Steve Howe-sounding lead jumps up now and then. This is drifting music where the vibe is one for bedroom space travellers with a smell of patchouli oil as rocket fuel.
All of which appears to be making way for the big epic track; and at almost twenty seven minutes, “Incipiency Suite” feels like a mighty progressive rock epic. After a stuttering start, a great steady drum pattern gets things moving as a very vocal bass run hits through over the top — this is cosmic jazz folks! The guitar creates gliss effects as it whistles around over the urgent rhythm, then picks up with angrier note picking. Here the band begins to traverse strange landscapes — in fact you can almost imagine the 1960s camera work from an old sci-fi movie over the top of it; they discover strange plant life as the music scatters around them. Then we begin to build into fragments of fear as the music takes a slightly darker path. Twirling and buzzing synth tones give an element of danger as you imagine being pursued by some rubber-suited monster.Then things drop down and a lone guitar plucks Grateful Dead-like over shimmering cymbals and whooshing synth. Echoed guitar swirls back and forth as the band slowly slips into more of a rock pace with the bass tune becoming central to the overall feel. Guitar chords begin to trickle like warm summer rain on parched earth. The drumming crashes around the kit that builds into a Chris Squire high end bass solo that drowns in echo until the whole band are swallowed by the engulfing sea of echo and feedback. Here time stands still as drones and soft psychedelic weirdness overtakes. This is the sound of planets unfolding in star-lit skies at the horizon of the landscape. The guitars now play a lonely melody, which is as beautiful as it is full of longing; this is a hymn to the void and to other celestial beings.
-Gary Parsons-
