Album Review: Causa Sui, Loppen 2021
Posted in Reviews on November 10th, 2023 by JJ Koczan
One of European heavy psychedelia’s most essential acts, Danish instrumentalist four-piece Causa Sui last released a live album in 2017’s Live in Copenhagen (review here), and six years between them seems like more than enough for an outfit so vibrant. The narrative (blessings and peace upon it) holds that guitarist Jonas Munk, drummer Jakob Skøtt, keyboardist Rasmus Rasmussen and bassist Jess Kahr recorded Loppen 2021 at the renowned Christiania venue named in its title on Sept. 11, 2021, the same week Denmark lifted its covid lockdown. And if you ever wanted to hear that manifest into sound, the kick-in of “Homage” captured here should do the job nicely, even before the organ shows up. Playing to a crowd of 400, Causa Sui left behind the jazzy explorations of their most recent studio LP, 2020’s Szabodelico (review here) and offshoot projects, solo work and collaborations to solidify around what their own label El Paraiso Records once used to call ‘Freedom Fuzz’ when it printed the slogan on trucker hats a decade ago.
Heady considerations of aesthetic? Well, yeah, they’re still there. I mean, it’s Causa Sui — as deep as you want to listen, they’ll meet you on that level — but the vibe here is more casual, perhaps relieved given the context. Causa Sui have never been a road-dog kind of band, and because of that, one assumes that whatever money they make comes from all those fancy records they sell through El Paraiso, but in the 16-minute take on “Ju-Ju Blues” from 2013’s Euporie Tide (discussed here) and in the dulcet, lightly Western ramble of the guitar in “Under the Spell” from Szabodelico, the swirl of effects that rises as “Mondo Buzzo” sloughs into its midsection, soon enough with its guitar solo drawn in, they sound genuinely immersed in the moment.
Maybe that’s me reading into the story I’ve been told about the record. That happens. I’m not sure that makes the energy of Loppen 2021 any less palpable as Causa Sui take eight select pieces from out of their storied and sprawling 18-year catalog for an 81-minute set that, yes, sees the band present their material in its full dynamic range, with the buzzy gotta-jam-now urgency that starts opener “The Juice” flowing smoothly into the subdued dream-keys in “Mondo Buzzo,” which follows, and on from there. “The Juice” and the aforementioned “Ju-Ju Blues” — penultimate to the perma-closer “El Paraiso,” which was on their 2005 self-titled debut — as well as “Mireille” and “Homage” are from Euporie Tide, which makes four out of eight inclusions, where Szabodelico only has “Under the Spell” and the prior 2017 studio LP, Vibraciones Doradas (review here), just “El Fuego”; though, I say “just” there and the track is 11 minutes long.
Still, the lesson of that is Loppen 2021 isn’t a show the band were playing because they were trying to promote a thing — at least not any more than everybody is trying to promote a thing anytime they do anything; they’re probably not going to fight you if you try to buy a t-shirt or some vinyl — so much as revel in the spirit of that moment and celebrate the not-at-all-simple fact of their ability to be on a stage again. They’re not the only outfit to emerge from the no-live-music portion of the covid pandemic with a live record, but the intention is so resonant, they’re so dug in, and the set is so rock-based — which sounds funny thinking of Causa Sui as a heavy band, but from improv jams to jazzy collaborations, they could have gotten up there and done just about anything they wanted — that the show-as-catharsis storyline can’t help but fit. To wit, the held organ notes in the build as “El Fuego” moves past its middle and comes to life like the ’60s never ended and it was a secret but you just found out, or “Mireille” breezes through its cyclical sans-vocals chorus ahead of the all-in finish of “Ju-Ju Blues” (16:22) and “El Paraiso” (12:21), both of which underscore the resounding and floating nature of their energies.
Part of what one might appreciate about any given Causa Sui release is the sense of exploration that’s so endemic to their approach, the fact that they seem to make weighted tones step lightly, blending ideas classic, modern and futuristic into a take that has evolved from its mid-aughts European heavy rock foundations — still audible in “El Paraiso” and elsewhere, for sure — into something the band’s own and the basis of an oeuvre fostered through their label in their own output and that of others. I don’t know what it might’ve been like to be at this show — Causa Sui are a bucket-list band for me — but as Munk solos over the roundabout crashes at the crescendo of “Ju-Ju Blues,” the impetus to find out is laid bare. They crash and stop, then follow the organ line’s mellow swagger to the end, which is greeted with well justified howls.
And baby, when that “El Paraiso” strum hits, there’s nowhere to go but out of your own head. On a technical level, Causa Sui are masters of their respective crafts, and “El Paraiso” is the moment on Loppen 2021 where they truly underscore the “we’re back” message, but with a “we” that goes beyond themselves to include the audience present and, by extrapolation, the listener at home. Whoever decided this would be publicly released, whenever that decision was made, the result is a lush and vivid encapsulation of Causa Sui‘s more rocking side and a deeper experience because of how the music is used in hindsight to tell the story of the moment the recording was made.
No doubt the band could take you track-by-track through each miniscule, unnoticeable-to-anyone-else flub, but this is what live heavy music is all about, in terms of the band’s chemistry and the notion of a given night, a given show, as a fleeting thing not to come again. It is to the benefit of all who take it on that Loppen 2021 exists, and if you’d point out the rare nature of an act whose third live album ends up being one of their most essential and evocative offerings, well yeah, that’s kind of what I’ve been saying this whole time. There’s only one Causa Sui. Established fans and newcomers alike should have no trouble after hearing this in extrapolating just how much that means.
