Surya Kris Peters: Ego Therapy

I must admit that Surya Kris Peters is a new name on me and even under the less enigmatic title Christian Peters, the singer and guitarist of Samsara Blues Experiment has passed me by. Hence my initial confusion; the simmering image of a lady’s face overlain with what looks like electronics diagrams on the cover of this album leading me to believe that I was entering the realms of female fronted melodic rock! Well, not one bit of it, because Ego Therapy - quite amazingly the sixth album from this project since 2015 (there have also been two EPs) - is a million miles from straight up rock, but then neither is it a blues album, nor a particularly guitar led outing.

Instead, under the name Surya Kris Peters, this man of many talents moves into a world where atmospheric synth sculpts the landscape on which sprawling, melodic vistas captivate and excite. Peters isn’t shy in adding his guitar prowess to the flowing sounds but for the large part we’re in instrumental, electronic mode. Names such as Jarre, Oldfield and Schulze are therefore easy to bandy about but that the album’s title track adds elements of David Gilmour’s guitar work to that mix, and “Beyond The Sun� takes us deep into Alan Parsons Project scale, scope and sound, should leave little doubt that the inspirations behind Peters’ music are wide and varied, if still strongly interlinked. The addition of drummer Jens Vogel (who Peters worked with in the band Terraplane (not the one that morphed into UK hard blues rockers Thunder, obviously)) on the latter track and roughly half of what this album serves up is a clever move, allowing the more driven fare an organic, honest feel that isn’t found on most remote electronica.

With “Sleeping Willow� exactly the sort of slow crawl its name evokes and the short “Every Master Has A Mother� also relying on shimmering atmospheres, the ways in which Ego Therapy gets its message across certainly takes on a number of different guises. However that doesn’t stop the more overt Jarre-isms of “Atomic Clock� or “Voices In The Distance� from being amongst the strongest efforts on show.

Don’t judge a book - or an album - by its cover. In the case of Ego Therapy, never has a truer word been said.

Track Listing
1. Angels In Bad Places
2. Ego Therapy
3. Beyond The Sun
4. Voices In The Distance
5. Wizard’s Dream
6. Gemini IV (The Sky Is Open)
7. Sleeping Willow
8. A Fading Spark
9. Every Master Has A Mother
10. Atomic Clock

Added: September 19th 2019
Reviewer: Steven Reid
Score:
Related Link: Ego Therapy on bandcamp
Hits: 842
Language: english

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