V: dive without return to a space-rock vortex :: Ondarock reviews

Between oriental echoes and space hallucinations, the fifth album of the Greeks Naxatras seems to want to trace the stellar map of contemporary space-rock. A multifaceted journey that draws on well sedimented traditions and re -elaborates them with awareness and ease. The approach is not the unstructured strange Common to a lot of contemporary neo-psychoelia, but a passionate rediscovery of the evocative power of hypnotic grooves, dense and stratified atmospheres, gradual transformations. Each song is a drift, but with compass in hand.

The sound of the Salonicco band is based on a solid rock system, with powerful but never rigid rhythmic pillars to act as a foundation for every possible stylistic exploration. On this incessant pulsation, the Naxatras intertwine a lucid, never chaotic psychedelia, which opens from time to time to cosmic, anatolical, jazzate or prog suggestions, in a seventies revivalism (but not only) that manages to play at the same time quote and personal. The result is a trip Caleidoscopic but controlled, in which each turn appears necessary and calibrated.

Songs such as “Spacekekeeper” immediately recall the lyssergic landscapes of the Ozric Tentacles and the aesthetic of Free Festival: grooves cyclic, flows of effects, synth gorges that orbit around an imperturbable rhythmic center. “Breathing Fire”, shortly after, opens the doors of perception towards a ritual trance-Psicelico, made of vocal drones, fluttering flutes and minor harmonic stairs as if it rained. The rave He continues with “Numenia”, who plays with the micro -dependent micro -deflexions to the King Giizzard & The Lizard Wizard – or Altin Gün, to stay in the Mediterranean field – suggesting a strong bond with the modal music of the Near East.
With “Legion”, the imagination still turns: between pressing percussion and orchestral ornaments with arabic inspiration, something of the opulence of the Secret Chiefs 3 emerges, poised between mystical and kinematic spectacularity. Long “The Citadel “develops due to accumulation, between granitic riffs, dilations and variations in intensity, in a crescendo that does not hide the influence of the tools in the architectural construction of the songs. But the tracklist also knows how to travel more relaxed trajectories:” Sand Halo “Distilla Shadow Placid and Funkeggiant, with a dreamy Rhodes and a clear guitar and bluesy Which recalls the most contemplative side of Pink Floyd (“Wish You Were here”, “Animals” as well as certain melodic softness of the Parsons Project.

“V” is a work centered on the rhythm, on the ambiguity of intertwining between variation and repetition, on hypnosis as a travel tool. The real enchantment lies right here: in the band's ability to bewitched the listener with small waste, minimal oscillations, timbrical shades that insinuate themselves without haste. A disc that does not scream but persuades, that does not forcefully drag but sucks – and that in the constancy of the beat finds the beating heart of his musical narrative.

17/04/2025