Mythos
“Mythos” is composed, performed, and produced by Astral Son. All vocals and instruments by Astral Son (organs, Moog synthesizer, electric guitar, bass, acoustic guitar, Indian harmonium, drum programming, tabla, tingsha, cymbals, cowbell and other sounds). “Mythos” consists of 8 tracks, equally divided into the 2 sides of the LP album. The opener “Nothing Remains” starts in a magical, mystical, and kind of hallucinogenic way, with a remarkable Krauty beat, numerous spacey effects but the most significant ingredient here is the HUGE ghost of early Pink Floyd, while the final result is dressed with a tremendous Psych-a-Creepy guitar sound. And if you try to set your mind free for a while, then instantly you’ve been tele-transported into the magnificent atmosphere of Floyd’s “Live In Pompeii”! A deeply Psychedelic and super Spacey track! The second track, “Fishes”, starts and it seems… er… sounds… like it’s time to welcome Syd… An amazing late 60s Psych atmos, deeply Pink Floyd inspired (and I’m referring to the first 2 Floyd albums), this is an excellent example of some modern Neo-Psychedelia, totally British influenced! Of course the vocals are bringing Syd to mind… Towards the end, Astral Son launched the track into SPACE! “On A Cloud” is a slow piece of Psych, kind of nostalgic, definitely trippy, all the necessary Space Rock doses are present of course, and probably by now we have stepped into an early 70s Space void with a dark n’ cold n’ creepy n’ deeply frozen spacey ending… Now, it’s time to start flirting with some late 60s Beatlesque Psychedelia with “River Flow”, Leonardo creates an astonishing unbelievable Psych-Space soundscape with a psychedelically flavored mind-blowing atmosphere, it gives you the feel that you’re in the middle of “Echoes” during the Pompeii Live, Brilliant! Wow, though it started as Beatles-inspired track it transformed into a Floyd-deeply-inspired anthem, excellent! Side ‘B’ opens with “Wall Of Illusion”, this is SPACE ROCK at its Best! A little krauty flirting, a little Prog flirting, with a cinematic feel, you can easily be disillusioned if you just close your eyes for a sec or two… This is remarkable 70s inspired Space-a-Delia! The next one, “Hazy Shades”, rhythmically speaking, is a strange track, abnormal, different, starting as a blurry kind of rock balladesque tune, becoming a bit proggy, entering a Space stratosphere, and reaching high levels of obscurity… Cool! “Reality” is a Space-Psych tune, slow, trippy n’ creepy, with a camouflaged Beatlesque atmosphere, kind of futuristic, drenched into melancholy… Eventually, the album comes to an end with “The Poet”, another “weird” tune – I love weird tunes – kind of spacey with lots of mid-70s Floyd references, a spacey ballad… and I can’t think of a better epilogue for this Epos! Mind-Blowing from the very start to the very end! Come fly with “Mythos”, the journey would be absolutely Trippy!
TimeLord Michalis (TimeMachine Productions)
“Mythos” by ASTRAL SON is featured on my personal TOP 50+1 Albums of 2023, it reached No 8. (TimeLord Michalis)
Bei Astral Son handelt es sich um ein Soloprojekt des niederländischen Musikers und Malers Leonardo Soundweaver, der fünf Jahre nach seiner letzten Veröffentlichung wieder auf der Erde gelandet ist. Um uns mit seinem neuen Album “Mythos” zurück in seinen Sternenkosmos zu schießen. So als sei er nie weg gewesen setzt er den Stil seiner bisherigen vier Einspielungen nahtlos fort, was seine Fans sicher freut. Seine psychedelische und teils trippige Musik dürfte die Liebhaber der frühen Pink Floyd sogar regelrecht begeistern, denn der Opener ‘Nothing Remains’ zeigt ihnen eindeutig wohin die Reise geht. Da zischt und blubbert es unentwegt, während im Hintergrund eine Sitar dich geradewegs nach Indien beamt. Fehlen nur noch die Räuchermännchen, um sich in die Ende 60er/Anfang 70er Jahre zurück katapultiert zu fühlen. Der Bass spielt dabei so stoisch wie im Pink Floyd Klassiker ‘Echoes’, die Keyboard Sounds wabern durch den Raum und eine sphärische Gitarre schwebt über allem.
Direkt in der Zeit von Syd Barrett um 1967 landet man dann im folgenden ‘Fishes’. Die Naivität und Schlichtheit des Tracks erinnert unwillkürlich an einige Songs des Debüts “The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn” und zeigt dem Hörer noch einmal überdeutlich, wo die Anfänge der progressiven Musik liegen.
Das Album zieht wie ein langsam fließender Strom am Hörer vorbei, klingt manchmal etwas motzig und frech wie das betörende ‘Wall Of Illusion’ oder einfach nur entspannt wie im Schlusstrack ‘The Poet’. Unentwegt saugt die Musik von Astral Son eine gehörige Portion Psychedelic der ausklingenden 60er Jahre ein, die dazu in vielen Momenten an den Krautrock der frühen 70er erinnert. Ohne verstaubt zu klingen, ohne zu kopieren. Naja, fast ohne…
Astral Son findet aber meistens seinen eigenen Weg, orientiert sich natürlich an seinen Vorbildern, schafft es aber sich nur die Rosinen aus seiner Favoritenkollektion heraus zu picken. Das Album klingt somit recht eigenständig und seine Vorbilder aus der Urzeit der progressiven Rockmusik dienen ihm nur als Leitplanke. Für den Fan dürfte noch interessant sein, dass das Album vom Künstler komplett selbst komponiert, gespielt und gesungen wurde. Leider sind aber die 300 Alben auf Vinyl momentan bei ihm selbst ausverkauft, so dass man sich mit der digitalen Form zufrieden geben muss. Vielleicht sind aber noch einige Exemplare bei den bekannten Online-Händlern zu erhalten.
Bewertung: 10/15 Punkten (Marc Colling, Betreutes Proggen)
Mythos, which contains 8 songs, starts with “Nothing Remains”, in which Astral Son performs a lovely song with a medium tempo and a recurring rhythm, which has psychedelic influences and contains a catchy rhythm, and this song is followed by “Fishes”, an excellent 60’s related psychedelic song with a medium tempo and “On A Cloud”, A great song, which has a catchy rhythm and is also played at an average tempo.
This is followed by “River Flow”, a great psychedelic song in a not too fast tempo, which has influences from the music of The Beatles and Pink Floyd at the end of the 60’s and after a few minutes progressive elements and a recurring rhythm is added, “Wall Of Illusion”, a beautiful song with a catchy recurring rhythm and progressive, symphonic and spatial influences and “Hazy Shades”, A nice sounding psychedelic song with a medium tempo, a recurring rhythm and slight progressive influences.
In “Reality” Astral Son presents me with a fantastic song, which has progressive influences and contains a catchy rhythm and in “The Poet” he lets me enjoy a delightful song, which has spatial influences and contains a medium tempo.
“Mythos” by Astral Son is a masterful disc with 8 great psychedelic songs, which contain progressive influences and I can highly recommend this album to every lover of these types of music.
****1/2 Carry Munter (New Underground Music)
Wonderful Beyond
Not long ago we brought the Dutch multi-instrumentalist Leonardo Soundweaver here with his project Son of Ohm . I liked it so much that apart from soaking up other of his works, today I’m boarding another of his alter egos, Astral Son. With this name he made before “Wonderful Beyond”, a beautiful trilogy: “Gurumaya” (2014), “Silver Moon” (2015) and “Mind’s Eye” (2016).
Psychedelic space rock in all kinds of vintage variants, in which Leonardo handles himself like a charm. The beginning with “She” is a return to the lysergic roots, with audio generators soaring through the space. A lot of influence from the first Hawkwind (and all his students).
“Matrix of Creation” could be from Steve Hillage’s “Green” or “Motivation Radio.” In fact, his guitar playing is practically identical. Not surprisingly, Gong’s pixiehead teapots flutter happily around the mood of the theme. The truth is that if they had given him the baton to lead the legendary group, as happened with Kavus Torabi, little would change within a band that actually hasn’t existed for years. A zombie effect, which will mean that in 100 or 200 years, bands from the 70s will still exist. Everything is as unreal as their music – universe. Ecos acid folk kraut brings us “Time & Space”, which equally invokes Kalacakra, Broselmaschine or Pink Floyd themselves. Acoustics with subtle electronics and buzzing FX effects of all kinds. Something that always works in this type of happy flying.
More rockers continue on “Your Mind”, managing to seem like a whole combo, when in reality it’s the global result of the Groningen’s multiple musical abilities. For “Moving Slowly”, in a minimalist package, he recreates the hallucinatory quasi-childish reveries of Syd Barrett with great skill and melodic conviction. Indie folks have tried this a million times to no avail. It’s not easy either. The first thing is to understand it, and then feel it. Simple posturing doesn’t work. Astral Son has the key. In “The Universe” he krauterizes the tempo as if it were made in a humid basement in Düsseldorf, in the early 70’s. The initials Kraftwerk and Cluster revived in a one man band that doesn’t live in this world (fortunately for him).
“Cheap Magic Spells” follows those parameters, but with early Floyd in its DNA, as well as Kevin Ayers’ Whole World. The result is even exciting, how nailed it is. It means something to us with “Nothing New”…..indeed, pure vintage Can motorik will not be very new, but who can resist if it is made as fantastically as what is exposed here. It’s worth too much to me. His guitar combines electric echoes of Karoli, Cipollina or Leonard, while the rhythm persists over a plague of electronic insects. Now it is a mysterious bass who gives way to “The Well”, with his Barrett voice reminding us that, no matter how much time passes, no matter how many obstacles the bad guys throw at us, you can always take refuge in that temporary corner where you feel protected and safe from such a fool who commands so much, (Manolo Kabezabolo said). He is not far removed from brilliant proposals from the recent past, such as Bevis Frond. This is confirmed by the final triad with “Journey” / “Morning Dew” / “Quiet Love”. In an excellent end of party, full of real psych dreams. No ñoñi-pop indie (wrongly called “psych music”), food for summer festivities for hipsters, (when there was).
Leonardo Soundweaver is a man of integrity with his ideas and musical convictions, which are also social, philosophical and political. And the best thing is that he knows how to capture them with the realistic effectiveness of someone who understands what he exercises. He is from 2018 but could be from 68. Time doesn’t matter, emotion matters. Astral Son knows about that for a while.
JJ CHURCHES Rockliquias
Heading from Groningen, Holland, Leonardo Soundweaver is a talented instrumentalist – among other occupations – and since 2003 he is releasing his own Retro-Futuristic, Organic Electronic and Psychedelic Music through numerous side projects. Astral Son is one of these! Having released a fantastic Trilogy – Gurumaya/2014, Silver Moon/2016, Mind’s Eye/2016 – Leonardo spent the whole 2017 in creating, recording, composing, tripping and collecting experiences – normal and astral ones! So, out of all these came his 4th album, the follow up to his Trilogy, entitled “Wonderful Beyond”. When trying to describe it musically, I think of a huge forest with a few paths that somehow magically lead to the same glade deep inside the woods. In this parallelism the “paths” are Space Rock, Acid Folk, Early 70s Progressive, Mid 70s Electronic Rock and the “glade” is the musical genre inside the album! A wonderful ‘Bastard’ space-rock idiom! Well, the LP version consists of 11 tracks and the CD one of 12. The album takes off with “She”, everything starts under a heavy n’ spacey distorted-somehow scenery, lots of spacey effects and a blistering remarkable guitar sound (and solo) but as the song develops, the atmos become more and more psychic without losing its unique complexity! The track blends with the next one, “Matrix Of Creation”, the motive becomes incredibly Cosmic, kind of intergalactic strange atmos, like if The Fab Four during their “Revolver” days decided to experiment and take a ‘space-rock route’! The Space nightingales, the acoustic instrumentation and the heady vocals of “Time And Space” are creating a cerebral psych soundscape, it’s like a Space Shaman offers a Space Litany, in a faraway another universe. Well, the exact specific location where Time and Space are melting has finally been discovered! The same spacey atmosphere continues on “Your Mind”, but it seems that someone sprayed the whole Space (inner and outer) with Acid! The track shows a tremendous psychedelic complexity that floods your inner world with Universal Love! If someone notices carefully the lyrics of “Moving Slowly” he may find an autobiographical point of view inside this song. Macrocosm and Microcosm beautifully collide and a New Universe is emerging under a weird brainiac mysteriously focused musical environment! Next one is “The Universe” that simply tries to answer the all-time-question of “Who Am I”? This is Modern-Age Spacey Psychedelia to Blow Your Mind! Acidly drenched psych music capable to ‘excite’ or ‘irritate’ even the more distant cells of your brain! “Cheap Magic Spells” with its calmly start and the psychic semi-acoustic vein, progressively becomes an interesting neo-space-psych tune. Just imagine a kind of laid-back Hawkwind high-on-acid, jamming somewhere in another galaxy without electric power but getting energy directly from the Suns! Another wonderful electric-less instrumentation goes on “Nothing New”, with backward sounding effects while acoustic & electric instruments are blending together creating a trippy inviting lively soundscape. “The Well” is electrifying space-rock with a more earthly approach and an optimal guitar solo! “Journey” simply states that ‘Space is the only Place to be’! A boundless spacious Trip is in full progress! Under a psychic vein, trippy & creepy atmos, a snarly tune that perfectly blends with “Morning Dew”, Space is Infinite but Earth is wonderfully unique, the Astral Journey ends with the listener gazing the morning dew under an acoustic space-rock sounding. The CD bonus track is called “Quiet Love” and it’s a spacey acoustic song. So, this is an album that successfully manages to safely travel the listener beyond beyond! And hence the title, it’s Wonderful Beyond! A cerebral album, deeply complicated with a sophisticated space-attitude and I highly recommend for the 10 first hearings (at least) to use your headphones! It certainly will help you to understand what’s going on inside “Wonderful Beyond”, inside this Psychedelicious Intoxicated Dream-Like Supra-delic Topnotch Space-Rock flavored Colorful piece of Musical Art! (TimeLord Michalis)
TimeMachine Productions
Wonderful Beyond is the latest, fourth solo album as Astral Son by psychedelic musician and painter Leonardo from Groningen, The Nerherlands. I have really enjoyed his previous albums that have all been released on limited vinyl by Headspin and this one is no exception. This is the third one to also get a CD release on the marvelous Sulatron Records and the CD version includes also one bonus track “Quiet Love”. The production values are now higher than before, not that the earlier output had sounded bad by any means. You can still sense a certain home-made, pleasant vibe on this album. As before, the album includes everything from acid folk to psychedelic space rock, experimental electronics and Eastern-tinged ragas.
“She” is a slow and heavy psyche/krautrock track somewhere in between Amon Düül II and Sun Dial. What a great, trippy and spacey tune! The hypnotic “Matrix of Creation” is closer to Steve Hillage or Gong and another winner. “Time and Space” is an acoustic, peaceful piece including also bird-song. “Your Mind” again brings to mind Hillage/Gong in a good way. On “Moving Slowly” we get to take it easy. “The Universe” is a more experimental, mantra-like track with cool narration and backwards guitar. “Cheap Magic Spells” is the longest track on the album at almost seven minutes. This melodic song sort of sounds like a mix of early The Bevis Frond and Ethereal Counterbalance, very nice. “Nothing New” is a bluesy track and “The Well” again brings to mind Ethereal Counterbalance a bit. Great psychy solo guitar work on this one! “Journey” is a hypnotic, heady instrumental and “Morning Dew” a mystical, weird piece that ends the vinyl version in a hazy manner. The CD bonus track “Quiet Love” is a pretty space ballad. This is absolutely another killer album by Astral Son, maybe the best yet!
Dj. Astro from Astralzoneblog
Following on from a recent trilogy (Gurumaya, Silver Moon and Mind’s Eye) by Dutch one-man band Astral Son (aka Leonardo Soundweaver) who took a year to write, play and record this album, an album which takes in space rock, acid-folk, seventies electronics and eastern flavoured tunes.
To give you an indication of Leonardo’s sound, I would say a mix of Steve Hillage and Hawkwind immediately spring to my mind. It is a bit ofa concept album, with one song bleeding into another. ‘She’, the album opener is all swirling, billowing synths, fluid guitar lines, and vocals with a touchof backwards guitar, as this first song progresses, we are definitely in space rock territory, ‘Matrix of Creation’, follows and wouldn’t be out of place onHillage’s Fish Rising, praise indeed. Birdsong and Eastern sounds announce the arrival of the gentle ‘Time and Space’, a foreboding song of astral change.‘Your Mind’, takes us back up into space, with a chugging mid paced rocker, before ‘Moving Slowly’, appears, this is a questing song of wonder, that sees flangedguitar, keyboards, and cymbal washes, then ‘The Universe’, hoves into view; it asks the question Who Am I? A vaguely Eastern space rock tune, imbued withbackward guitar. ‘Cheap Magic Spells’, the longest song on the album, it could well be the album centrepiece, ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space,it’s a classic space rock song, big riffs, spiralling galaxy synths and plenty of organ, before ending in a glorious fluid guitar solo. ‘Nothing New’, issuesan appeal to step off the treadmill, this song is rather Beatles-esque in its structure.
‘The Well’, takes us on a magic carpet ride, it tells of butterflies spreading their wings, of reflections of silver and gold, themessage being we are one… Let’s be honest, it is a bit clichéd and full of the familiar hippie tropes, but it is his guitar playing which impresses enoughto overlook this, and keeps me from being too cynical. ‘Journey’, follows and is an enjoyable space rock song, it builds nicely as it heads off into thefirmament. The album ends with ‘Morning Dew’, (no not that one!) it provides a gentle, meandering song to conclude this enjoyable album.
(Andrew Young) Terrascope
Mind’s Eye
“This Dutch one-man project focuses on the psychedelic music from the era between 1967 and 1975. It blends elements mainly from Pink Floyd‘s 60s psychedelic adventures and Eloy‘s pre-Ocean era, but there are also parts that remind me of Ashra Temple, Tangerine Dream, and sometimes Gong and very early Kraftwerk.
The compositions on Mind’s Eye are truly authentic as are the arrangements and instrumentation. The man behind the project took very much care to sound exactly like the old school idols, and has maintained the production sound to be like the ones of old days. So those who were around when psychedelic and space rock happened originally will experience a full throw-back to old times, and maybe wish they had a joint at hand for the full enjoyment of this album.
Even though it is not progressive at all to create this sort of music in the here and now, listening to Mind’s Eye is still a great retrospective of a time in which creative music was free of genres. If you still have a flavour for the albums of the golden era of prog and psychedelia, and if you love the imperfect sound of those albums, you shouldn’t miss this one!”
DPR
“As you can ascertain I am very impressed with Mind’s Eye. A prime example of the psychedelic/space rock genre.”
Jon Neudorf (Sea of Tranquility)
Silver Moon
It’s an excellent crossover of space and kraut rock, psychedelia as well as electronics. Rivertree (Progarchives)
It’s one of the first albums with that much influence from electronic music that I like, it’s a real nice surprise to me. Mr. Radio (More Fuzz)
Gurumaya
I love every track. The record is incredibly well produced and there are interesting ideas at work in every track which beg for, that’s how you know it is true psychedelia. I hope another LP will follow soon. Richard Bone.
Brilliantly expansive psychedelic rock that mixes guitars, keyboards & synthesizers for a very full, surrounding sound.
Strong melody lines with a prog-pop flair will hook your interest and trippy, near-metal lead riffs
will blow your mind; while otherworldly vocal harmonies float on the electronic paisley-puff clouds
in the catacombs of your brain. A calm center of authentic 60s/70s influence steers the
hallucinogenic atmosphere with a steady, strong blast of epic rock ‘n’ roll drug music. Recalls
bands like Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Saturnia, Brainticket, Baby Woodrose, the Brian Jonestown
Massacre, Hidden Masters, Asteroid No. 4. Limited to 200 copies on marble orange vinyl, this is
a perfect partner for the altered consciousness of toking time.
By Charlie Quaker