04 August 2025

SENDELICA – Nirmata (2025, LP+CD, Fruits de Mer Records)

RELEASE INFO:

Label: Fruits de Mer Records (Friends of the Fish 85)

Format: LP, Album, Limited Edition, Coloured Vinyl, 100 copies

Format: CD, Album, Limited Edition, Picture Disc, Gatefold Sleeve, 100 copies

Release Date: 14 Aug 2025

Emerging once again from the swirling mists of West Wales, the ever-resilient Sendelica return with “Nirmata”, an album forged in the shadow of illness, distance, and transformation. But this isn’t just another cosmic drift through the space rock multiverse. It’s a deeply personal and spiritual transmission from the brink, birthed from blood pressure monitors, heart valve ultrasounds, and remote recordings stitched across continents. Founding members Pete Bingham and Colin Consterdine, both recovering from serious health crises, use their adversity as fuel, channeling a sprawling, psychedelic vision that bridges ambient electronics, smoky sax mantras, and celestial guitar voyages. Joined by longtime collaborators and fresh voices—including cello, spoken word, and spectral vocals—Nirmata (Sanskrit for “creator” or “architect”) feels less like a record and more like a rite of passage. A rebirth. A deep inhale after a near-drowning. This isn’t just Sendelica being Sendelica, it’s Sendelica building a new dimension from within the wreckage.

Well, it’s been quite a year for Colin and me, Colin surviving his liver cancer and I, with, first of all my heart condition, (Enlarged Heart) and then a further scare at the end of last year when I suddenly became very anaemic which turned out to be a severely inflamed, blocked and bleeding bowel.

But out of adversity comes inspiration, as Colin was travelling around Asia, we started working on a new Sendelica album remotely, we were joined by Glenda and Lee, who recorded in Cardigan, and also by Calli on vocals, Kate Riaz on Cello, and by The Last American Poet, Shane Beck, on spoken word.

I used some audio samples of my ultra scan, who knew that heart valves opening & shutting could sound so trippy (!), and of course my talking blood pressure monitor at Hope, which funnily matched Colin’s Asian Journey.

Colin took some amazing photos on his journey through Asia, some of which feature on the album cover… (Bandcamp)

The album opens in an unexpectedly tender space, gliding on ambient textures, medical voice samples, and a slow, nostalgic pulse with “Wish You A Good Health”, a gentle sax drifts through like a reassuring presence in a hospital corridor. Spoken word adds a human dimension, while the whole piece unfolds like a drifting memory, experimental, personal, and oddly comforting. The title track “Nirmata” rides a lo-fi drum machine heartbeat, gradually layered with swirling psych haze and creeping prog undercurrents. There’s a hypnotic repetition here, with spacey effects circling a steady pulse, trippy, smoky, and ritualistic. Side A closes with “Singled Out And Strangely Left In Limbo”, distorted guitars hover over a lazy beat, threatening to lift off but never quite reaching climax, by design or by fate. It lingers in the in-between, with stellar psych guitar lines cutting through the fuzz. A slow-burner that embraces limbo as a valid destination. Side B opens with “Blood One”; this one enters on fragile acoustic footing, distant piano, shivering atmosphere, and the weight of silence. The wind-like instrument (Mellotron or otherwise) gives off serious requiem vibes, like a soundtrack to a beautiful funeral on Mars. Dark, jazzy, and transcendental. What follows is a short but stunning breath of ambient jazz air called “Save Your Breath”, ethereal female vocalizations (no words needed) flow through acoustic stillness. It’s a tunnel song, shimmering like light bouncing off the walls of your own subconscious, dreamlike and ghostly, but peaceful. The album eventually comes to an end (a conclusion if you wish), with “Peyote Sunrise”; it begins with an echoed invocation – “peyote sunrise” – and what follows feels like an out-of-body transmission from the edge of time. Sax lines squiggle and mutate, backed by abstract textures and spoken word musings on death and astral escape. Like eavesdropping on a lost Timothy Leary tape, warped by age and intent… What a Trip!

“Nirmata” isn’t just another entry in Sendelica’s deep discography; it’s a deeply human statement disguised as cosmic instrumentalism. Born from physical frailty but shaped with sonic resilience, the album drifts between worlds: ambient and prog, jazz and psych, body and spirit. With its mix of found sounds, soulful improvisation, and evocative storytelling (both verbal and wordless), “Nirmata” feels like the soundtrack to survival, fragile, expansive, and defiantly alive. This is music for the tunnels we pass through, and the light we hope to find at the end. TimeLord Michalis