MANTRIC MUSE

What a surprise, Mantric Muse are back on track with their (debut!?) album in 2012. This band is hailing from Copenhagen and started around 1998, has produced and released one EP at the very beginning, then some years later played an important part in contributing to the birth of the Oresund Space Collective in the person of Magnus Hannibal (guitar, synth), bassist Michael Kroglund and Ola Eriksson (synth/keys). All have been steady OSC members afterwards during several years, including the band's peak (so far) while reaping black tomatoes on extended journeys through time and space.

Supported by drummer Søren Holm Hvilsby they are back to the roots now with an album which truly is worth a listen. Well, a damn grooving thing this is, what marks the affinity to OSC first and foremost. And then add some pinches of Ozric Tentacles respectively Quantum Fantay (the synths for example) and finally merge this with the creativeness of My Brother The Wind ... voila, that's it if you want to know how I would describe the album's framework conditions more or less.

Seven songs are given, extracted from a large catalogue of jams, which have been mapped, dissected and then re-created into parts which are rarely crossing the ten minute mark. Thus basically there is more structure and diversity to discover if one should intend to compare with OSC albums. The longest tracks Sfunx and Deep Sea Cheops turn out to be the highlights for me - yeah, it sounds like they've got the monopoly on the groove here, instruments are playfully deployed, twists and turns included, really really entertaining.

Now that leads to the conclusion that Mantric Muse are bringing some new spirit to the scene, definitely. Released on Transubstans Records this self-titled album features top-notch space rock including driving drums, fat bass lines, swirling synths and sizzling guitars - hence a must have for genre connoisseurs.