Review: Farfisa ‘Cosmodrome’
It’s rare for a band to wait eight years before releasing a debut full-length, but that’s exactly the path Manchester’s psych-rock trio Farfisa has taken. I’ve followed them since their 2018 debut single The Great Ballet, and each release since has felt like a deliberate step outward: away from tighter structures and toward a more expansive, krautrock-steeped space rock sound.
The evolution is traceable record by record, early singles hinting at the direction, the EPs pushing further each time, the sound gradually loosening and stretching. Nothing in the catalogue feels accidental or abrupt; each release answers questions posed by the last, revealing a band more interested in exploration than destination, one patiently discovering the outer limits of its own sound without ever feeling the need to rush.
For certain, Lucian Thomas(guitar/vocals), Will Robinson(bass/synth), and Luke Shenton (drums/percussion) each bring their own modus operandi to expanding the band’s musical frontier, blending psych heaviness with the warmth and boundless atmosphere of cosmic sound. Their lyrics occupy a fascinating middle ground between lived experience and pure imagination, using space not as escapism but as a lens on curiosity, isolation, wonder, and the urge to push past the familiar.
The songwriting mirrors this philosophy: tracks unfold organically from spontaneous, improvised excursions rather than conventional structures or radio-friendly runtimes, with a quiet confidence that trusts each other and the music enough to let compositions find their own shape. The longer you spend inside them, the more they reveal recurring motifs emerging from swirling guitars, subtle rhythmic shifts altering the momentum almost imperceptibly, textures that only surface after repeated listens.
Following Farfisa has felt less like watching a band release records and more like watching them build an entire universe, one EP and improvisation at a time, each piece connected to the last. That’s what makes calling Cosmodrome, which began taking shape in 2023, their ‘debut’ feels almost like a technicality. By the time their 2025s Space Debris 001 arrived, with its four tracks stretching into long-form improvisation, it already possessed many of the hallmarks of a full-length album. The runtime was there. The ambition was there. The immersive quality was unquestionably there. It would have been entirely reasonable to call that the debut and move forward, and honestly, I half expected them to. But understanding Cosmodrome as a concept album changes everything.
This isn’t simply the band’s most expansive collection of material; it’s a carefully structured narrative with a defined trajectory. The album opens with Space Race, a song about Yuri Gagarin’s historic spaceflight, and there’s no easing in: an explosive, fuzzy, distorted burst of sound, more energetic than anything the band has put to tape before, the sound of ignition, a countdown collapsing into liftoff. Think The Heads locked in a room with Monster Magnet, that same fuzzed-out churn colliding with riff-driven momentum, except aimed skyward, chasing escape velocity rather than earthbound heaviness, a chain reaction where each riff seems to detonate the next.
the magnetic and vibrant atmosphere of fuzzy psych alt rock…
‘Heavy it pulls on you and I, guides them away into eternity…’, these opening lines of Jupiter Bodyguard Part 1 & 2set the tone for a track worlds apart from Bittersweetie Part I & II off Space Debris 001. It begins with a bluesy heaviness, dissolving into a passage of psych-rock reminiscent of early Tame Impala, before pulling back into that same heaviness once more. Then comes the shift: the track’s second phase opens into a spectacular blend of romanticism and slow-to-fast psych-space rock, gathering pace until it’s careening. Robinson‘s vibrating synth work threads through it all, lending a prog-rock colour that deepens its sense of scale. The band’s evolution lands here with real, thunderous force.
While Tinnitus offers a captivating, melodic moment closer to the band’s slower early sound, the guitar-driven rhythm of The Drang brings a funky edge. It’s a solid, assertive track that straddles the line between indie and fuzz rock, a characteristic also found in Partheon, where the interplay between rhythm section and searing guitar work keeps the momentum taut without ever losing its footing.
The penultimate, From Zenith To Azimuth, is a genuine space odyssey in which an astronaut’s voice emerges through the static: ‘I am a single wave as I am the ocean – I am the peaks and the troughs, the stillness and the motion. Am I the body or the brain inside?’ Suspended somewhere between ambient drift and cosmic rock, the track uses that disembodied voice as an anchor, turning a sonic experiment into something almost meditative. It is a splendid, immersive journey through the mind that connects to the album’s conclusion through the magnetic and vibrant atmosphere of fuzzy psych alt rock of Household Gods.
As a line in the song goes: ‘Human experience is introspective, contemplate.’ One cannot help but agree with this profound and open-minded perspective. Taken as a whole, the album closes on a fitting note of unity. What begins as a scattering of distinct sonic explorations – slow-burning psychedelia, funk-inflected rock, fuzzed-out indie grit – resolves into a single, coherent statement by its final moments.
From Zenith To Azimuth and Household Gods work in tandem as bookends of introspection, pulling us from the vastness of outer space back into the intimacy of inner thought. It’s a graceful way to end a record that spends much of its runtime pushing outward sonically, only to land, in the end, on something deeply and quietly internal. Farfisa doesn’t just close the album here; they complete its argument, leaving behind the sense that the entire journey was always headed toward this same question of self.
For those of us who’ve followed every step of that journey, Cosmodrome is immensely rewarding. It doesn’t discard the experiments, improvisations, or sonic detours that defined the band’s earlier years; instead, it absorbs them into a cohesive statement that feels both ambitious and inevitable. After eight years of patiently expanding their musical universe, Farfisa have finally delivered the album that doesn’t just justify the wait – it explains why the wait mattered in the first place.
Label: Sour Grapes Records
Band Links: Facebook | Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram
Scribed by: Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Caccamo
