Album Review: Surya Kris Peters, Universo Paralelo
Posted in Reviews on September 29th, 2026 by JJ Koczan
Christian Peters, once again based in Germany after years of living in Brazil and fronting a live incarnation of his began-as-a-solo-project band Fuzz Sagrado filled out by the members of Black Box Massacre, formerly guitarist/vocalist for Samsara Blues Experiment and once upon a time of Terraplane, doesn’t break out Surya Kris Peters that often. His ‘other’ solo-project — longer running than Fuzz Sagrado, but historically less of a band — began over a decade ago as an experimentalist outlet, and it remains that these 11 years and at least eight full-lengths later on Universo Paralelo, though the shape of that experimentation has changed. When Peters set forth, Samsara Blues Experiment was still active, and so the project became a way for Peters to step away from the expectations of a growing fanbase, to flesh out new ideas and different influences than his then-main band typically worked under.
In the time post-SBE, which is to say throughout this decade, Fuzz Sagrado has stepped in to fill that ‘band’ role again, but it started not far off from where this 11-song/49-minute Surya Kris Peters LP ends up, exploring the interactions between programmed and organic elements, between guitar and keyboards and synthesizers more directly, and giving Peters an instrumentalist outlet apart from songs over which he might otherwise feel compelled to add vocals. However, Surya Kris Peters, Fuzz Sagrado, and even Samsara Blues Experiment exist in a continuum of Peters‘ craft that’s never led to one project being just one thing, and that definitely applies to Universo Paralelo as well. It makes sense in the overarching progression of Peters‘ work, but is purposefully not beholden to a single expressive or evocative ideal so much as it is capturing a kind of meditation process through music.
Kosmiche-style electronics, programmed drums and a definite laying out of prog-rock scope are a fair enough place to start, and the central message of the opening title-track is indeed one of digging in. The guitar work is intricate and forward, but the keyboard isn’t far off in the mix. Enough to create a sense of space or presence, certainly. Universo Paralelo later on grows more cinematic in pieces like “Hard to Leave,” “Summer Reign” and the closing duo of “Paraiso Fechado” and “Romantic Sequence,” but there’s a good bit of rock running alongside the synth drones and keyboardy sounds, as the seven-minute “Discovery of Abacus” demonstrates after the almost-boogie second cut “From Distant Shores” dares to blend acoustic and electric guitars, keys and a persistent drum pattern for one of the several vingette-type excursions included. “Discovery of Abacus” is the longest single track on Universo Paralelo, and it plays out with deceptive tension as the keyboard backdrop is busy while the guitar tone floats overhead in slower figures during the first half before taking flight in the solo comprising much of the second and the quiet moment at the end when that rhythm track has faded out.
The subsequent “Hard to Leave” is shorter but dips its toes in a similar ideology, swells of drone and keys coming together to give something of an anxious feeling without pushing the listener out of the immersion of the material prior. With its ringing resonance, “Sleepless Raag” prefaces some of the noddling to come in “Summer Reign” (is that Mellotron there as well? it might be), but the short, guitar-y “Back on Track Again” keeps simple time beneath its bluesy lead lines, and the somewhat acknowledged grounding effect is well-placed as the centerpiece of the album. Peters is no stranger to the territory he’s working in here, even if pushing himself in terms of feeling out where these songs are going is part of that. It’s always been an introverted sound, and it still is, but what results across Universo Paralelo is honest in terms of what it wants to do musically, and true to that intention in how it’s realized.
Ultimately, Universo Paralelo is of the oeuvre of Peters‘ 2020s-era solo work, the bringing together of ideas from heavy psychedelia and classic prog with his own style of rock informed by them. As one might anticipate, “Universo Paralelo” is among the more straight-ahead of what’s on offer, and it finds a complement in “Vale Das Sombras,” which brings back the drum sounds behind a wash of Morricone meeting Tangerine Dream, ending up in a big guitar melody answered by the keyboard and a few moments of near-danceability before it ends on the keys and “Summer Reign” picks up, serene but still in motion, and brief.
There’s a CD, but I don’t know if Peters intended a vinyl release for the album, but as “Wall of Sleep” leads into the aforementioned “Paraiso Fechado” and “Romantic Sequence,” there is a palpable sense of being in the thick of side B. Not that anything Surya Kris Peters puts out is necessarily going to be straight-up rock or without the abiding complexities inherent to what he does, but the balance between guitar and keys tips toward the latter as Universo Paralelo moves toward its finish, and “Wall of Sleep” — a keyboard choral chant providing the ‘wall’ in question — harnesses a sense of drift without actually drifting before, bringing a darker tinge that “Paraiso Fechado” builds on with a buried low rumble of tonal heft and “Romantic Sequence,” which is almost if not entirely keyboard-based, wraps thereafter, seemingly aware of its soundtrack-type vibe if the title is anything to go by.
That Peters caps in a place so distant from where he set out probably won’t surprise those who’ve engaged with Surya Kris Peters in the past, but it’s a showcase of the reach that’s grown in his methodology over time and the fact that he can stand so solidly on unfamiliar ground is emblematic of his veteran status. This kind of thing is never going to be for everyone and it isn’t meant to be, but the character of the material, the scope and the encompassing feel are definitively Peters‘ own, and they make a world to be stepped into.
