Battle Of The Future Buddhas – Cause, Principle And One Eternal (2024)

[acid being]

Suntrip Records  – SUNCD81

CD 1: Dawn

1-1  Strange Fantasy   8:47

2-1  Broken Bass   7:53

3-1  Centurion   9:18

4-1  Chemical Imbalance   9:30

5-1  Flumerider   8:00

6-1  Magneto   8:53

7-1  Edge Of The Void   9:14

8-1  Datalabbsladd   7:45

9-1  Hymn   7:24

 

CD 2: Dusk

1-2  Messed Up And Wobbly   8:00

2-2 Attack   7:48

3-2 Evermore   9:34

4-2 Chrome And Silver   8:55

5-2 To Hell   9:44

6-2 Apex   9:21

7-2 Mega-City One   8:59

8-2 The King Of Kings   8:16

9-2 Requiem In Tenebris   6:34

 

https://suntriprecords.bandcamp.com/album/cause-principle-and-one-eternal

 

With this excellent double album, I would argue BOTFBs have perfected their signature style of somewhat dark, intensely psychedelic Goa trance.

At nearly 2 and half hours, I must confess I have not yet made it the end of this mammoth offering. Eternal is right.

In short, I really like this music a lot. The first thing that strikes me as I listen to the first few tracks is they have excelled at conjuring up exciting textures. It feels deliciously gooey, soft and a little bit scratchy. In their earlier music I was impressed by the spatial effects and the same is very true here. Some of the melodies drift around as you listen and seem to take on a kind of almost 3D depth.

This is very hard music, as even though the Dawn half of it is slower and mixed more softly, I feel a relentless drive in the looping patterns and continuous beats and there is a nice darkness even to the Dawn CD. The Dusk one is even harder, faster and louder.

It has some great voice samples as well. No spoilers here.

The only other thing is I don't totally get that cover art. Guess I need to stare at it for a while. Some kind of fairytale theme.

 

8.5 / 10

[acid being]

I have listened to the whole thing since I wrote that review and it is all well made but at this stage I think I prefer the Dawn CD to the Dusk one, which is probably not too surprising as I like their later stuff a bit better than Twin Sharkfins.

I found this really interesting about the production in the bandcamp writeup:

Quote

No compression is used in the production, except to master the tracks. But not as a tool to get the kick and the bass to give more oomph. This allows for the rest of the sounds, the melodies, to dominate and tell a story, instead of being yet another empty sound quality focused production. Sound quality might mean chosing the right sound to tell a story, not just having perfectly spectralized waves and frequencies. 



That's quite impressive there is no compression in the mixing stage at all. To my ears it doesn't sound like the sound suffers as a result of that.