Cosmic Room 99 is a band from Italy releasing its debut album. It consists of Antonio Angeli (vocals/drums) and Matteo Scarpa (vocals/bass), both members of Kill Your Boyfriend, and Diego Menegaldo (vocals/guitar), a former guitarist of New Candys. The band mostly recorded in its own studio in Treviso, a town a little north of Venice. The inspiration comes from a documentary on the discovery by a NATO employee of a plan to "eredicate a part of the world's population to maintain Earth's sustainability", called 'The Cosmic Room'. That sounds rather Dan Brown to me, so let's focus on the music.
The Italians have listened to a lot that has been going on in psych rock over the past decades. To my ears, things start with those typical The Velvet Underground rhythms. From there the band that comes to mind most to me is The Black Angels. Cosmic Room 99 brings the same mix of directness and mystery to its music. Listen to 'Red Lights'. The band combines that pounding on the skins, making the song rock hard, with an electric guitar that does everything from shredding to playing a stark rhythm and mysterious wafts of tones. The voice is somewhere between real and treated. It makes for a very direct and yet mysterious song.
It is perhaps a decade ago that I wondered whether the world needed one more psychedelic band. Since then dozens have reached me and the answer must be mostly yes. There certainly is room for Cosmic Room 99. Especially because the band is not afraid to rock. It brings a lot of energy to its music. In combination with the quality of the songs, the band wins out easily. The fact that it has three singers, makes for more variety as they sound very different.
A good example of how the mystery ends on the higher level, is the aptly called song 'Atmosphere'. The tempo goes down, the bass receives a fuzz oomph (or something like it) and there are whole swaths of sounds smeared out over the song. Together with the way of singing, it gives 'Atmosphere' a dreamy quality. Underneath is a huge rhythm section, above it a host of melodies are presented in an early Pink Floyd style, from before that band really broke big. Whether Cosmic Room 99 will ever get there is uncertain but certainly something it may want to strive for.
Cosmic Room 99 successfully manages to manoeuvre itself between these two sounds. It makes band and album a welcome addition to my psych rock collection.
Wout de Natris - van der Borght
You can listen to and order Cosmic Room 99 here:
https://cosmicroom99.bandcamp.com/album/cosmic-room-99
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