Citrus Citrus - In the Belly of the Eternal Draw (2025) [Official Digital Download 24/48]

There’s no single path through the belly of Citrus Citrus’ new album. Only spirals. Reflections. Threads that intertwine and dissolve. In the Belly of Eternal Draw is an invitation for the listener to get freely lost.

This is the second album by the Italian psych ensemble. If their debut revolved around the concept of metamorphosis, In the Belly of Eternal Draw is more of a kaleidoscope: one that rejects linearity in favor of complexity and the unpredictable outcomes of improvisation. Each track offers a different worldview, a distinct lens through which reality may appear fractured, oblique, or refracted through dreams. A record shaped by the shimmering absence of one central idea: a free wandering of styles, voices, and illusions of truth. Eight songs, eight divergent points of view from a different cultural machine.

Composed primarily through extended improvisational sessions, the songs began as shared pulses: moments of collective exploration rather than individual declarations. “No one shows up with a finished song,” the band explains. “It’s about creating something alive, in the room, together.” Structures emerged from jammed fragments, developed like maps sketched in pencil and only traced in ink once the voice found its place.

The first single, Let It Chum, is a hypnagogic exploration that fuses robotic funk with emotional crescendos, reflecting on the theme of acceptance. It flows through shades of introspection and bursts of emotive release. While critics might be tempted to trace lines back to psychedelic classics, the real legacy here is more elusive. “Sure, the guitar textures nod to a certain heavy psychedelic lineage, but structurally, the references go much deeper,” says the band.

From sonic glimpses of King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard to the spectral jazz-rock of 1970s Japan and the visionary swirl of German kosmische musik, everything is filtered through a shared archive of ambient, punk, minimalism, and far-flung folk
traditions. These influences are evident in the second single, Sushi Sushi, which captures the tense dialogue between the dry aesthetics of the Paisley Underground —a neo-psychedelic movement born in 1980s Los Angeles — and the endless experimentation of krautrock’s recursive patterns. Citrus Citrus is a collective listening circle. “Each of us brings in sounds from different worlds,” they say. “And we listen. That’s how this record was built: by listening together.”

Among the darker moments is Eternal Draw, the track that opens the album with a cathartic plunge into anxiety. Here, Citrus Citrus’ rhythms craft a narrative of suspense and anticipation that echoes throughout the record. In the Belly of Eternal Draw is intended as a journey that leads to a kind of miracle, a vision of something previously unseen. Mountain Depth suggests this ‘elsewhere’ as a horizon worth exploring, even within the recording process itself.

In fact, the band conceived the entire album as a kind of escape from time, beginning with the recording sessions themselves. They took place in total isolation at Matt Bordin’s Inside Outside Studio, nestled in the woods of Montello, in the province of Treviso. In the nature, the studio offered a musical residency that allowed the band to focus entirely on the dynamics of sound and the structure of the songs free from external distractions.

This is why the album ends with Asterione, the focus track and final piece, offering a burst of liberation: eight minutes of celebration, carnival, and sonic sarabande, a metaphorical explosion of the tension that has built up across the record.
Fittingly, the final sonic form was shaped by another set of ears entirely. Japanese producer and mixing engineer Yui Kimijima (renowned for his work with Kikagaku Moyo and Minami Deutsch) took the reins in the album’s final stage, leaving a profound mark. “He gave the record a direction we could never have imagined without him,” the band says. “Working with him was a true honor. He’s generous, meticulous, and brought out something completely new in the music.”

Mastering was completed in Turin by Manuel Volpe of Okum Studio, and great care was given to the visual dimension as well. The cover art was created by Japanese illustrator Noguchi Shimura, with layout design by Marco Venturi aka Supernulla.
The result is a meticulously crafted, detail-obsessed album that bends around the listener like soft light through stained glass. In the Belly of Eternal Draw doesn’t offer an apocalyptic vision, but something far more ambiguous: a multiverse in quiet conflict with the world we think we know. “Truth today feels inevitable and non-negotiable,” the band says. “We wanted to create a space where imagination can breathe, where fiction isn’t false, but necessary. That’s how we resist the illusion of a single, final reality.”

Like Borges’ dreams, like the cinema of repetition and disappearance, this is a record built from shadows and echoes. Its themes return, mutate, and vanish. Its truths contradict each other. And yet, somehow, you believe all of them.

Tracklist:
01 Eternal Draw
02 Circular Ruins
03 Sushi Sushi
04 Irace del Capo
05 Let Me Churn
06 Ivory Crumbs
07 Mountain Depth
08 Asterione


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