“The music of Mind's Eyes flows on a river of tones where the reflections of old Pink Floyd and of the first Ash Ra Tempel will find the path of your memories”
1 Time for Chance 9:03 2 Brainstorm 4:51
3 The Way 3:38
4 See Your Sel 4:26
5 Dream 6:36
6 Mind's Eye 9:27
7 The Observer 2:19
8 This Trip 3:49
(CD/DDL 44:11) (V.F.)
(Cosmic & Vintage Krautrock)
Leonardo Wijma wears several artistic hats. In addition to Leonardo Soundweaver and Son of Ohm, that are musical projects more focused on pure EM of the Berlin School style, the Dutch musician also likes to flirt with the roots of Krautrock with his other project Astral Son. So in order to unravel it all, here is a review on this album from a versatile artist who has already made 3 albums on Sula Bassana label, Sulatron Records. MIND'S EYES is his last one to have landed in the bins at the end of 2016 and offers these ingredients of this psychedelic music of the vintage years with a music more focused on the work of his guitar, while the synths and the organ are busy creating a hallucinogenic ambience of the LSD years and the electronic percussions and the sequencing patterns are creating its lot of equally exciting rhythms, even in the more lunar and introspective phases. I warn you right away; Leonardo sings as much as whispers in a voice sometimes hushed and sometimes more direct. And in order to preserve this intimate setting between Astral Son and the listener, the production offers a very close promiscuity between our ears and the speakers.
Time for Chance puts us all in the bath with a heavy and slow rhythm. The introduction challenges my memories with the music of The Doors, for the texture of the moods. The voice is not really aggressive and complete quite the vintage decor of a music that rolls on a good and quite lively line of bass pulsations. The synth scatters quite well its psychotronic effects while the organ is generous in unfolding its layers of ether mist. The title plunges into a simply sublime phase when percussion and percussive effects mistreat this structure that asserts its presence by hosting a very creative guitar with its wah-wah and reverb effects while sculpting long and slender twisted guitar solos. The music is offered in a continuous mosaic of 45 minutes, creating a journey through the ages of Berlin rock. Brainstorm follows with a nebulous and almost apocalyptic structure without a precise rhythm, but one always has this effect of spinning in a dense whirlwind. The Way is quieter with a distant essence of Pink Floyd's Ummagumma. It's a good psychedelic ambient track with scents of Son of Ohm's latest opus, Electronic Muse, with a nice organ's strata that lazily drags the structure. See Your Sel begins with fragrances from the Middle-East before turning into a psychedelic space rock built on multiple riffs of a six-string which weave a slightly more spasmodic tempo as the finale comes back to sniff the steps of its Genesis. The music, very catchy, flows towards Dream which is a very good slow dance with its more electronic sonic coat. This cosmic slow gets heavier and more lively to finally reach an orgasmic effect before deviating on the title-track and its heavy Psychedelic Blues fed on Pink Floyd's essences. Although the guitar is ubiquitous throughout the album, it reaches a climax here by stuffing our ears of good solos whose mixed tones flow in a hypnotizing spiral. We are in this same decor when The Observer arrives and reaches another threshold of intensity with more effects of guitar loops whose reverberations are melted in a heavy texture of hallucinogenic moods to deviate towards the structure as heavy as slow of This Trip. And it's already over ... Vintage Krautrock animated by the essences of EM from the same era, the discovery of MIND'S EYES and the universe Astral Son have passed like a charm. If you are fans of this music, the Sulatron Records label has some very nice surprises to put between our ears. The particularity of this label is to produce a very vintage music where the genre experimental Berlin School from the 70's to the 73's is very present. Like here where the music flows on a river of tones and psy elements where the reflections of old Pink Floyd and of the first Ashra will find the path of your memories. Me? At that time, I was devouring Alice Cooper, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and others! From where without a doubt this little heart stroke I had while discovering this MIND'S EYES from Leonardo's Astral Son. Sylvain Lupari (October 4th, 2018) ***¾** SynthSequences.com Available on the Bandcamp site of Sulatron Records