Band:	Litmus
Album:	Aurora
Style:	Adult Oriented rock
Release date:	August 2009

01. Beyond The Sun
02. In The Burning Light
03. Eos
04. Miles Away
05. Stars
06. Kings Of Infinite Space
07. Ma:55oN Rift
08. Red Skies

Lee Dorrian loves sending us various psychedelic albums that are on the very fringe of metal, at best. Litmus is another such band and their album Aurora, released by Dorrian's Rise Above Records, is once again music that will appeal to fans of long jams, cosmic imagery and that little drug commonly available on blotting paper.

Sure, there are guitars here and the tempos tend to be quite fast for this kind of music; however, the spacey atmosphere created by omnipresent keyboards is really what Aurora is all about. Actually, the album's title is spot on, since the sparkling, hypnotic synth washes immediately conjure up images of the titular phenomenon and listening to this album is very much a journey, or rather, a trip, through the cosmos. Often, the guitars and vocals will simply stop leaving nothing but drums and rich ambiance for us to sink into. Nevertheless, something must be said about those parts of Aurora that sound more like a proper band than like HAL 9000 on drugs. Stylistically, the rock Litmus falls somewhere between the more raw songs that Hawkwind released with Lemmy on bass and post-punk's obsession with simple, bouncy beats, prominent bass lines and repetitive guitar riffs (think Loop). In other words, this is pretty unusual stuff in the contemporary music world, with only last year's Voivod side-project Kosmos offering reasonably similar music. "Stars", with its clear Motörhead-inspired riff is the definitive standout song of this album since it sounds heavy and concise, yet just as psychedelic as a pink cow flying on a magic carpet. "Kings Of Infinite Space" could also be considered a beautiful power ballad if only it was about 4 minutes shorter. Sadly, the rest of the album is somewhat marred by the wishy-washy character of the music, resulting in everything sounding samey. With this said, the second half is noticeably better than the first.

Alas, psychedelic rock is music that one is supposed to either really get high to or at least pretend enough to be able to dive into the mental vortex and be enveloped by strange music. In that state, such things as interesting songwriting is obviously secondary; however, when was the last time you saw a real hippie? Yeah, I thought so... For most of us, this album will be little more than a curiosity and lets face it, Aurora doesn't really one-up Hawkwind, it just revives it.