CERIMÒNIES

This band from Barcelona is basically a trio (Aleix Braso on drums and percussion, Victor G. Roca on vocals, guitars, sitar, effects, and Riccardo Parenti on bass), with two occasional guest musicians (Victor Bonetarboli on sax and clarinet, and Christina Garret on vocals), with a lot of Psychedelic and Space Rock musical influences. I was asked to listen to this album and I really expected a noisy and chaotic collection of random sounds and avant-garde experimentations, and I'm not a fan of that kind music, really. But after I listened to this album in their bandcamp.com website, I found that this is not a noisy collection of random sounds. To me, it seems that every song has a planned structure played mainly by the trio of musicians with some participation from their guest musicians. Having some overdubs, I think that the songs were really composed and planned before being recorded. Even the synthesiser's psychedelic sound effects sound like being played in a planned way. Even if there are some improvisations, the music is not chaotic. There is some use of guitar feedback, atmospheric guitars, heavy drums playing and reverberation.

Another good thing is that this album is not really "dark". It is really a collection of songs with some influences from Free Jazz music, Indian music (also using a sitar), Psychedelia, and some influences from PINK FLOYD (pre- "The Dark Side of the Moon" album), KING CRIMSON (1972-74) and HAWKWIND. The music is never boring. I can't understand the lyrics because it seems to me that they are written and sung in the Catalan language. But they work very well with the music.

The recording and mixing sound good to my ears, never being really noisy, despite the use of some feedback in the guitars playing.

As a whole, this is a good album which could be a very good listening more particularly for the fans of the Psychedelic / Space Rock musical style.