“The Maximum Albedo”, to give its English translation is the debut album by a new italian psychedelic rock band Citrus Citrus founded in Padova in 2020 by guitarists Lorenzo Badin and Luca Zantomio (Badin also plays Farfisa organ and sitar; Zantomio guitar and sax), joined after some months by bassist Enrico Maragno and drummer/ multi-instrumentalist Marco Buffetti. Citrus Citrus started as an instrumental improvisational project before being joined by singer, programmer and producer Thomas Powell, who also plays synth and percussion.
There are seven tracks: ‘Sunday Morning in the Sun’, a strong opener with some nostalgic Farfisa organ lines and nice piano by the drummer; ‘Lost It’ with hypnotic guitar, the singer approaching falsetto, quite distant in the mix which adds to the mystique with sitar taking up the theme, a lot of echo in the music; ‘Fantachimera’ is an instrumental, ‘Red Stone Seeds’ has that haunting Farfisa sound again, somewhat anguished vocals, a considered Latin sounding guitar line, Fetonte’: its length allows the group to stretch out a bit: the emphasis once again is on creating an atmosphere, a sustained organ chord before the rolling drums suggest an early PINK FLOYD instrumental exploration; ‘Sleeping Giant’, a quiet and pleasant reflective piece with dreamy sax combining with the vocal and Ray Manzarek (THE DOORS) like dalliances and, finally, another longish piece (8 minutes), Frozen/ Sun’: my word, doesn’t Thomas sound like the RADIOHEAD singer Thom Yorke on this one. Next time I would prefer the vocals higher up in the mix, but you can’t have everything!
Pure, distilled psychedelic rock, Albredo Massima is a promising debut psych album – well done once again to Dave Schmidt AKA Sula Bassana for introducing a band with such potential to the world. The album has been released on a limited edition LP as well as download.
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