CAUSA SUI: Free Ride CD digipak 2007 sealed MINT condition. Danish psych-rock with a heavy approach. Check audio (whole album, all songs)

Description

Storm-tossed Danish psych-rock.
If you’ve been pining for more of the untrammelled Blue Cleer-meets Can through-a-traffic-cone-sounds of Comets on Fire, Danish psych outfit Causa Sui (the names cribbed from philosopher Spinoza) should fill the gap. Pulsating opener Ventura Freeway sets the tone: a free-form psych-metal frenzy of screaming guitars, distorted vocals and Iggy-dumb lyrics. There are variations on the theme with Where The Streams Collide (folk-funk shuffle melding into Deep Purple workout) and El Paraiso (Ravi Shankar in a blender). On these terms, epic Sabbath-goes-surfing closer Great Blue Swells is the only way to end.

Stonerrock.com
What you get with Casua Sui is four Danes with a love of acid-based garage rock that draws as much from The Stooges as they do from Hendrix or Blue Cheer. What’s cool about Causa Sui is that they manage to be heavy without a bombastic approach. Their self titled debut is filled with well-crafted songs, and if you’re looking for some stellar psychedelic playing with a rough edge, then these are the guys to go to.

Roadburn.com
Denmarks Causa Sui plays a heady, fuzzed-out mix of 60s acid rock, kraut rock and proto-hardrock -think Can meets Blue Cheer or Hendrix mainlining Randy Holden. Forget about the glut of retro-rock bands wandering around in their paisley shirts and bellbottom jeans, Causa Sui are just four guys with a pile of killer riffs and a protean ability to jam. And man, can these guys fuckin’ play -far friggin’ out!!!

Metal District (March, translated from German): Causa Sui are true experts. They drive each composition down piece by piece, ending up in very spherical passages, allowing the listener to recover for a while, then letting the songs explode in

1. Free Ride (2:51)
2. Lotus (7:50)
3. White Sun (9:58)
4. Passing Breeze (10:36)
5. Top of the Hill (4:07)
6. Flowers of Eventide (2:08)
7. Newborn Road (15:01)
Total: 52:32

Causa Sui: Free Ride
Written, recorded and produced by Causa Sui. Released April 2007. Digipack CD on Elektrohasch EH122.

Imagine a tidal wave sweeping up from the 1960s through the 1970s; then cresting in the 1990s before finally crashing on a present shore – that’s what Causa Sui’s ”Free Ride” sounds like. This is the ‘heavy psych’ LP of the Causa Sui catalogue – one out of only two albums they recorded with a lead singer, this is most direct-sounding collection of tracks the band has done to date. You’ll find the sonic experimentation and curious song structures that also defines later Causa Sui records (just listen to those echo-treated flutes in ”Passing Breeze”), but what really ties this record together is an unashamed appreciation of the Grande Rock of the previous four decades. One can literally feel how the young lads has been absorbing endless amounts of Blue Cheer, Zeppelin, Mudhoney, Sabbath and Kyuss before cooking up these seven tracks.

There’s no shortage of killer riffs and Bonham-esque grooves. This is the kind of album where you ride it all the way to the end, as if overwhelmed by an awesome natural force.

When I first discovered Causa Sui I wasn’t about the typical rock and roll trip. I was falling for heady instrumental jams; acid-soaked fusion in the form of Bitches Brew and Miles In The Sky, and heavy synth excursions like Phaedra, Visions of Dune, and Geogaddi. I wasn’t looking for vocals to muck up the experience that guitars, drums, bass, and synth could give me, so finding Causa Sui’s Euporie Tide, Summer Sessions, Pewt’r Sessions, as well as their various solo adventures were kind of a mind-expanding experience for me.

At the height of my Causa Sui mania I was of course devouring everything I could get my ears on, this meant going back thru their entire catalogue. Unlike the rest of their discography, Causa Sui’s first two albums had vocals. Besides the core four-piece of Jonas Munk (guitars), Rasmus Rasmussen(keys), Jess Kahr(bass), and Jakob Skott(drums), there was Kasper Markus on vocals. While those first two records were still big rockers and diverse in their various mind-expanding sounds, I wasn’t really looking for vocals in my acid-tinged jams. While I appreciated the tunes, I never really visited those two vocal albums all the much.

Free Ride is decidedly the stronger of the first two albums, so this makes sense. The band had found their groove and sweet spot in the pantheon of psych rock, and singer Kasper Markus had his Dave Wyndor meets Damo Suzuki trip down pretty well by then.

I recently sat down with Free Ride to give it another go. While I prefer my heady psych mainlined into my cerebral cortex without vocals, I’ve come to the conclusion that Free Ride is an essential step in the history and mystique of Causa Sui.