YURI GAGARIN: The Outskirts Of Reality (STONER): review / opinion to read on Music Waves

Yuri Gagarin is a rather lazy group because since 2013 only three records have been released. And five (too) long years separate "At The Center Of All Infinity" from "The Outskirts Of Reality". Many of us were even wondering if the Swedes would one day offers us a new opus! But here it is, once again, dressed in a beautiful visual.

The third album is generally considered as an important step in a band's career, all the more so when its predecessor, despite its beautiful qualities, hasn't quite reached the level of the original masterpiece. So there we were with Yuri Gagarin, author of a first orgasmic draft, real cornerstone of a heavy and stellar space rock, followed by a superb but less jubilant "At The Center Of All Infinity", more difficult to access. What about "The Outskirts Of Reality"?

Let's start with the things that annoy (a bit). After five years of silence and an interminable wait, we would have liked to get a more substantial offering, which is moreover weighted down by an ambient interlude that doesn't serve much purpose even if, by its worrying cosmic emanations, it slips perfectly into this space program. Let's also underline the place at the end of the record of a track that seems to be a clone of 'The Long Rip', which was the climax of the first album. These minor reservations listed, let's admit that "The Outskirts Of Reality" doesn't disappoint.

Except for 'Laboratory 1', the opus is thus articulated around four tracks in a generous format (between eight and thirteen minutes on the counter), aggregated in a stocky menu to which a rather rough sound recording gives the rocky hardness proper to our Swedish cosmonauts. This very heavy way of cultivating a psychedelic rock with cosmic accents constitutes all the salt of the music by Yuri Gagarin. This is even more true with this opus, which the enormous 'QSO', with its soft tension, opens in the most powerful and sharpest way, a voluptuous eruption spat out by the volcano of a distant planet. In ten minutes, the G-point is reached.

As for 'Oneironaut', it's a velvety psychedelic jewel in the lineage of Electric Moon and even more so of Ash Ra Tempel (we think of Manuel Göttsching's work on Klaus Schulze's "In Blue"), a long sound escape where a stratospheric guitar explores mysterious lands at the galaxy's borders. The enjoyment continues with 'Crystal Dunes', an epic journey through the desert of bewitching beauty that the six-stringed guitar propels high towards the stars in a finale decorated with orientalizing arabesques. Finally, if it seems to recycle a whole section of 'The Long Rip' with which it shares the same impetus, the same greedy freedom, 'The Outskirts Of Reality' nevertheless ends the listening in apotheosis.

At the same time as interesting as the first record and more direct than "At The Center Of All Infinity", this third album sees Yuri Gagarin renew himself with intelligence, faithful to his hard and aerial heavy space rock and deliver the soundtrack of a space exploration full of dangers and treasures. So the wait was not in vain... - Official website

YURI GAGARIN

THE OUTSKIRTS OF REALITY

AUTRE LABEL

STONER