Astra
The Weirding

Return to the seventies. Music in its most psychedelic and dreamy form.

Few know the band in question and even fewer know this album. These Astra were born in 2001 in California and only managed to find a record label in 2009 thanks to Lee Dorrian who directed them to the English label Rise Above.

Doing progressive rock tied to the seventies is a musical proposal that goes quite unnoticed in today's market. Nevertheless, the American group releases an album hard to digest. Songs not immediately "digestible," a duration that nears eighty minutes. To fully understand the nuances of each track, one must delve into a world made of slow guitar touches, barely hinted keyboards, dreamlike atmospheres, a typical seventies rock recording. Musically, the band thus moves along the lines dictated in the past by groups like the early Yes, Pink Floyd, but also the Black Sabbath of the Ozzy era. By managing, through a reinterpretation entirely their own and very personal, to unite the stylistic features of the aforementioned groups, an album emerges that I never expected to hear.

After the initial instrumental "The rising of the black sun", the title track bursts forth in all its sublime beauty, a manifesto of what is the band's sound. A soft, slow start overlaid with absolutely evocative vocal lines with singing reminiscent of the early Osbourne. A song worth the price of the CD, enriched by an instrumental part that evokes forgotten landscapes, while the dreamlike "Silent sleep" is something exciting and evocative that I have rarely had the pleasure of hearing in the progressive realm.

The demonstration of their "daring" is also shown with the monumental "Ouroboros". Over 17 minutes of instrumental light and chameleon-like guitar visions intertwining with keyboards never overused. Creating a song of this kind is not for everyone, just like the concluding "Beyond to slight the maze" which transcends the very concept of music to bring it to the union between emotion and sensation. Try it to believe it. A fantastic song.

Assuming that "The weirding" is not an easily assimilable album, I can guarantee you that the platter is one of those records that, once fully understood, can transport you to an "other world." Astra has succeeded in bringing back a genre that for years now has not produced remarkable albums. They may not have invented anything new, but this work, as well as the band's debut, is a welcome surprise on the global scene, a definite return to those atmospheres that made the seventies the cradle of prog rock.

1-"The rising of the black sun" (5:43)
2-"The weirding" (15:26)
3-"Silent sleep" (10:40)
4-"The river under" (8:39)
5-"Ouroboros" (17:23)
6-"Broken glass" (3:44)
7-"The dawning of ophiuchus" (5:29)
8-"Beyond to slight the maze" (11:36)