Causa Sui Unveil First Track from Return to Sky in New Video
Last month, Danish instrumentalists Causa Sui announced their upcoming album, Return to Sky, with a teaser video. That clip was short, but it showed the band reaching well beyond the warm desert-style tones of 2013’s Euporie Tide in favor of a more angular, experimental approach. Today, the band affirms both a March 18 release date and their progression in the first full-song to come from Return to Sky, titled “The Source,” in a kaleidoscoping new video. The track is still psychedelic in its roots, but Causa Sui are pretty clearly looking to expand what that designation means and what they do with it, playing off the chemistry they’ve developed over their decade-plus together and the various avenues members have pursued in solo projects over the last several years.
The four-piece’s reputation has rightly skyrocketed since Euporie Tide, but “The Source” seems more intent on building off what that album accomplished rather than repeating it, and some rougher edges and percussive thud along with the spacious guitars work well to do just that early on as Causa Sui make their way toward a tripped-out atmospheric break in the second half, guitars and keys creating a wash that caps the track on a long fade. Presumably that’s to set up the entry of the next song on Return to Sky, but not having heard the album yet in its entirety, I can’t speak to just how that interplay between tracks might go. However, as anyone who heard Euporie Tide, the subsequent Live at Freak Valley (review here) or Pewt’r Sessions 3 (review here) can attest, these guys are no strangers to creating a sense of flow from one piece to the next.
Use your imagination. They’re clearly using theirs:
Causa Sui, “The Source” official video
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.
Causa Sui:
Jonas Munk: Guitars & electronics
Jess Kahr: Bass
Jakob Skøtt: Drums & Percussion
Rasmus Rasmussen: Keys and electronics
Produced by Jonas Munk
Artwork by Martin Rude
