SATORI

Interesting debut by this Argentinian psych/space band. First of all, TANTRA is one of those rare crews featuring a female drummer. But what makes it attractive especially is the carefully worked out song collection. For example the opener Einführung comes entitled in German ... and ambient floating - so this is an intro which obviously resembles the Kosmische Musik tradition offered by the likes of Tangerine Dream and similar. This transforms into the short space rocker Niño De Cobre when all the band members finally participate.

Like on El Lenguaje Es Un Virus Del Espacio Exterior keyboard/synth and guitar are playfully swirling around each other in general - El Emisario for example appears with Ozric Tentacles references. During the extended jam Bajo Tierra Jupi Medvescig's fuzzy guitar is brought to the fore in particular. Here we have a mellow spacey intro and outro including nice flute and sax contributions, predominantly this groooooves though and the guitars assume control overall.

The drum playing sometimes appeals to be uninspired, but on the other hand this stoic behaviour has a large share in the special TANTRA ambience. It only needs some time to acquire a taste for this stuff really ... but then you can imagine a collective with proper interaction working here - solos as such are not provided, hence this sounds compact overall, featuring nice grooves with hypnotic and repetitve character, where they reserve two longer jams to close the album. 3.5 stars so far as we can expect more challenging stuff from this band.