19 January 2024

CITRUS CITRUS – Albedo Massima (LP Sulatron Records)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Sulatron Records

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, Black Vinyl, 180 grams, (recycling wax made in Germany), plus download code, 300 copies

Release Date: 8 Dec 2023

Dave Schmidt, the head of Sulatron Records, keeps surprising us by signing to his label new exciting bands. This time he did it with an enthralling Prog/Space/Psych new band from Padova Italy, that goes by the name Citrus Citrus! Let’s have a look at Sulatron’s press release about the band and their debut album “Albedo Massima”:

“Sulatron Records is proud to present you the debut album by a new Italian psychedelic rock band! Citrus Citrus was born in Padova in 2020 as an idea by guitarists Lorenzo Badin and Luca Zantomio, joined after some months by bassist Enrico Maragno and drummer Marco Buffetti. Citrus Citrus started as an instrumental project based on several jams and past explorations in psychedelic music but eventually found its final form when joined by singer and producer Thomas Powell. Albedo Massima revolves around the idea of metamorphosis: myths and legends from ancient Greek and Latin cultures contain the roots of our present feelings and obsession as humans and Western societies. Along with the content of these mythologies and their migrations across the Mediterranean Sea and beyond, the concept of metamorphosis is reinforced by the Pomelo (the citrus in the cover art and symbol of the band), one of the three original citruses from which current species have evolved, both in natural and human purposes. The title is a play on words between botany and science: pomelos have a thick albedo under their peel, which is usually discarded but has a distinct scent and texture; also the maximum albedo (“Albedo Massima” in Italian) is registered when all incident light is reflected by a surface. “Sunday Morning in the Sun”, the opening track and first single from the album, follows the reflections of the sun as they dissolve into the space around them as well as Echo, the nymph whose body dissolves and whose voice eternally lingers in the landscape”…
“Albedo Massima” consists of 7 tracks, 4 on the first side and 3 on the second side of the LP album. The opening track “Sunday Morning in the Sun” starts in an outstanding trippy mystical way with a jungle-ish tribal rhythm, retro vintage sounding keys along with some spacey effects are creating a shimmering Psych abyssal soundscape, the whole scenery here reminds the very first Prog-Psych days of the Vertigo label, a psychedelically wondrous track! The slow “Lost It” follows, it’s a kind of dreamy progressive pop-rock balladesque song with hypnotic vocals and a sitar sounding that adds a Middle Eastern flavor, while the track more and more dives deep into Psych, building a huge Prog-Psych wall of sound leading the track into a Psychedelic Delirium! “Fantachimera” is a fantastic instrumental that blends sounds and melodies from Northern Africa, Middle East, and the Mediterranean Sea under a colorful fuzzy psychedelic prism, resulting a startling phantasmagoric psychedelic instro! “Red Stone Seeds” is a stoned (not stoner, hehe) psychedelic semi-acoustic track, a little proggy flirting, a little spacey flirting, and a little Middle Eastern flirting with a remarkable virtuoso kind of string instrument playing at the end, I will dare to call it Modern Mediterranean Psych! Side ‘B’ opens with “Fetonte”, there’s a proggy electric guitar-based cold environment, kind of blurry and abstract at the back, but slowly the track transforms into a dynamic Space capsule, launching the track up high, equally mixing Prog and Psych, this is an unbelievable fuzzy tribalistic Psych Space-a-delic instro! “Sleeping Giant” is a slow piece of hypnotic prog-psych with abnormal vocals, an ambient-flirting electric guitar, while the torturously slow beat makes the song sounding like a shoegazey cinematically pompous psych tune! Eventually, the album comes to an end with “Frozen\Sun”, starting trippy with a dark psychedelic and hypnotic feel, using the same “abnormal vocals”, it surely gives you a frozen sense, becoming heavy and spacey towards the end but without losing its Proggy complexion… So, Citrus Citrus have a quite different but really interesting aspect about their Prog, their Space, and their Psych personal sounding, they use some vintage “filters” from the early 70s and this is exactly what makes Citrus Citrus a most promising band, and I will keep an eye on them because I think the best is yet to come… And by the way, “Albedo Massima” made the list with my personal Top 50+1 albums of 2023, reaching the 13th place (check the list here)… Go and grab a copy now! TimeLord Michalis