No Strange
Demos 1983

THE REVIEW

Demos 1983 by No Strange is a journey to the origins of Italian psychedelia, a collection that brings back the historic cassettes “Rainbow” (1983) and “Lysergic Tomahawk” (1984), the group’s first experiments. Salvatore “Ursus” D’Urso, Alberto Ezzu, Tony D’Urso, and Rolando Fogli create a sound already original and visionary, a laboratory where music becomes exploration, imagination, and sonic philosophy.

In the 1970s, they passionately listened to records by Popol Vuh, Ash Ra Tempel, Tangerine Dream, Terry Riley, and La Monte Young, works that were difficult to find at the time and fueled their curiosity and creativity. From these influences, No Strange drew inspiration, but managed to transform them into something personal: even with a raw and naive sound, the demos already reflect the desire to distance themselves from the cold sounds of new wave and the dominant dark of the 1980s, in order to reclaim the lysergic, cosmic, and vital atmospheres of the origins of psychedelia.

Within the demos you can feel the living energy of the tapes: guitars, bass, and keyboards intertwine in streams suspended between dream and reality, reverberations and overlaps become gateways to unexplored mental landscapes, while the melodic lines guide the listener along a lysergic and contemplative path. “Rainbow” reveals the first buds of this vision, with vibrant sounds and luminous spirals, while “Lysergic Tomahawk” shows a band already more self-aware, able to transform cosmic influences into their own, hypnotic and original, territories.

The imperfections of the tapes and the deliberately raw sound are not flaws, but an integral part of the magic: they testify to the research and passion of a band that, from the very beginning, made a fundamental contribution to defining Italian psychedelia. Demos 1983 is therefore both a historical document and an immersive experience: it allows you to breathe, lose yourself and find yourself again within No Strange’s soundscapes, a prelude to the full maturity achieved with Trasparenze e suoni (1985), a bold and lysergic lightning bolt in a music scene dominated by new wave and dark.