Red Temple Spirits
If Tomorrow I Were Leaving for Lhasa, I Wouldn't Stay a Minute More...

I want to debunk this idea that the first album is a masterpiece and this one is a bit less. It's clear that "Dancing To Restore and Eclipse Moon" is fantastic, but this one is also superb, and what a journey it takes. William Faircloth on vocals and percussion, Dino Paredes on bass, Thomas Pierik on drums, Dallas Taylor on guitar, mix the dreamlike mysticism of the first with solid, transcendent foundations aimed at uncovering invisible situations close to us that we don't perceive, thus revealing the tangible rarefaction cast by the sacred debut.

William's disenchanted yet seductive voice guides us to areas where musical situations echo in a loop that brings us back to the starting point but on another level. The impersonal trance of the album produces an at times baroque, esoteric psychedelia, never entirely evocative, that flutters in an ancient cauldron, with a dynamism that makes the mystical travel not as a mesmerizing state but with effective astral acceleration, making the space shuttle that takes us on a ride always feel present through immediate sound solutions. The spiral reveals connections with fables, odysseys, arcane epicness, "Alice it's true," with that archaic atmosphere of past glories laid out by these ancient souls with the canonical rock instruments.

The magnificence of the pieces is embarrassing at certain passages, as we realize a shift towards uncharted shores where we consciously abandon ourselves to the psychic wave which, due to its crystal-clear announcement, we feel is pure.

There resides a clarity of sound that comforts us in not being afraid to go see some of that invisible surrounding us: "Living here can be as bad as it seems? Actually, it's worse if only you could see. I don't mean metaphysically, but here and now on the material plane. A great elemental appeared in my room, and flew in the air like a bat. Sitting here ready for the next attack by the psychic vampire clinging to your back, ignoring the forces that compel you to stay. Where there is a will, there is always a way. A black rain is falling to darken the sun, there’s not much time so run into the sun. I’m tired of living and writhing in pain and I will never trust anyone here again. My head explodes when I'm under attack from the psychic vampire clinging to your back, clinging to your back" (A Black Rain).

Luckily, the colored arc illuminates salvation, and when Rainbow’s End starts, I'm gone, I’m out... Beautiful.

The range of the musical proposal is so varied that the spectroscope captures a spectrum of psychedelic ballads dancing on speed changes that let us enjoy the lysergic compositions with a posture of dynamic liturgy. There’s the folk ballad, the dreamlike piece, the dark-rock frenzy, the esoteric impatience, the majestic psychedelia, the sidereal atmospheres… All sprinkled with a phosphorescent dust that transforms your body in a way that it can enter the Red Temple.

The road is uphill and the tension of the pieces makes you sweat, but upon reaching the summit, the paradisiacal breeze of the musical inlays is a refreshment that caresses our states of hallucination.

The band pays the price for uncovering unspeakable things with a severe car accident involving the van between one concert and another, cutting short a future that promised more hyperboles. The mandala took itself out.

The flashes of this work nonetheless settle that from Lhasa, the next destination is Shamballa. There's no doubt about that...