RETURN TO SKY

I've been following this band for a few years (since their Summer Sessions), and each subsequent release gets better and better. Causa Sui's music is a jammy kind of space-rock that owes equal debt to Grateful Dead's Dark Star and Pink Floyd's Echoes. Songs on the aforementioned Summer Sessions recording were unafraid to stretch out to 20 minutes or more. Here, on Return to Sky, the main thing that strikes the listener is how condensed the music has become. The entire album is a mere forty-five minutes which fits very comfortably on a single LP. It consists of 5 tracks each averaging about 9 minutes. This pattern of slimming down is carried on throughout the tunes themselves, as each song is a tightly constructed journey. However, the path is far from linear as each song travels through a number of different soundscapes from Hawkwindish hard riffing to jazz-inflected float-y soundscapes reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix's spaced out passages on 1983/Moon Turn the Tides. All of which Causa Sui had previously demonstrated their capability at doing on previous releases. On Return to Sky, however, all of the band's qualities get distilled into a powerful offering with little in the way of fat. I'd highly recommend this release for fans of Spacerock.

On first impression Return to Sky is one of those albums that I found myself really enjoying, but had a hard time with considering this as a "progressive album of the year" candidate. Primarily because the feeling I got from the album was that of a desert / Stoner Rock album. Particularly with the parallels I found between this album and Kyuss' Welcome to Sky Valley, a name that is strikingly samiliar. And it's not just the name itself that conjures this feeling. The very moment the sludgy, occasionally phasered, Proto-metal guitars start in the image of that early-nineties-retrograde approach sets in. But several listens drove home the expanses of undistorted psychedelic ambiance (quite a bit more reverb use),  use of keys, more non-power chord guitar work and the fact that it's an instrumental album. These originally seemed like minor differences to my ear but ultimately gave the album a more individual texture without disarming that raw intensity that caused me to draw those original comparisons. In fact, Return to Sky comes close at times, but does not fall into the structurally ambiguous "jam band" trap I find detracts me from enjoying many artists in the psychedelic/space rock sub-genre. And whether the aforementioned similarities I hear to Kyuss are homage or just coincidence does not make the album less enjoyable. Much like the similarities to Black Sabbath make Kyuss less enjoyable.

I very much enjoy listening to Return to Sky . Though I would stop short of calling it an excellent addition to any prog rock music collection. I very rarely (almost never) say this, but I believe this is the type of album that would definitely benefit from vocals. Good album, 3 stars.

Denmark's excellent psychedelic rock band's 2016 release, Return To Sky, finds the band riffing harder than it has in a while. Causa Sui is slightly revisiting it's stoner rock beginnings here, but their spacey, atmospheric tendencies have not gone away, just taken the back seat a bit. Openers "Dust Meridian" and "The Source" feature plenty of Kyuss-worthy riffs balanced by some lighter moments. The album's closing track, "Return To Sky," is the lightest, more atmospheric piece on the album, and serves as a welcome release from the fuzzed-out fervor that precedes it. The album Return To Sky echoes some of the band's 2013 release, Europie Tide, more structured style, which makes it a good start for newcomers to the band. Not their best release, but a damn good record nonetheless. 4 stars.