The conceit is simple. Each of the seven chakras gets its own suite, and an eighth piece, "A New World", serves as a coda. The pitfalls are obvious: sound-bath albums so often dissolve into a pleasant, indistinct haze, with a gong struck here and a bowl rung there and the listener drifting off before the second track. Andros avoids this by treating the instruments of ritual as compositional equals rather than garnish. Tibetan and crystal bowls, gongs and layered voices sit alongside fretless bass, harp, piano and analogue synthesisers, and they are given real musical work to do.
"Muladhara", the Root Chakra opener, sets the terms. Low drones and primal percussion establish a gravity that the rest of the album can push against. For a bassist-composer this is natural territory, and you can hear the luthier's ear for how wood and air behave. The fretless bass, Andros's own, gives the low end a vocal, human quality that keeps the grounding from turning to mere rumble. From there the suite climbs through sacral, solar plexus and heart, with Ambrogio Feudi's didgeridoo and a busy battery of hand percussion lending the lower movements a pulse that is ancestral without sounding museum-bound.
The cinematic dimension is the album's other great virtue. Andros writes with an eye for tension and release, and the arrangements swell and recede as though scoring an inner film. Chiara Santoro's symphonic harp and Gaia Possenti's piano supply the melodic light, and Luca Bernardini's analogue synthesisers add a shimmer that feels contemporary rather than nostalgic. The voices, led by Marina De Sanctis alongside Andros himself, are woven into the textures rather than perched on top, which suits music more concerned with atmosphere than with the confessional.
The production deserves its own paragraph. Recorded at La Strada in Rome by Mario Tuccimei and mixed and mastered by Enrico Furzi, the album sounds spacious and unhurried, with silence treated as an instrument rather than an absence. Resonant instruments are notoriously hard to capture without smearing, and here the decay of a struck bowl or gong is allowed to bloom and fade with admirable clarity. Headphones are recommended, and a darkened room is better still.
By "Sahasrara", the Crown Chakra, the music has thinned into something rarefied and open, and the final turn to a piano-led coda is a graceful decision. "A New World" does not strain for a grand finale. It settles, and in doing so lets the preceding forty-odd minutes land.
Reservations are few and mostly a matter of temperament. Listeners allergic to spiritual vocabulary will find the philosophy front and centre, and the album's long, patient arcs will frustrate anyone wanting a hook every ninety seconds. That is rather the point, however. This is music conceived as a passage rather than a playlist, and judged on its own terms it is an accomplished one.
What lingers is the craftsmanship. Andros comes from jazz, session work and the workshop bench, and the discipline shows in every transition. He has made a record that can serve the yoga mat, the meditation cushion or the concert hall without embarrassment in any of them. It is a gentle, assured and quietly ambitious debut, and a very good one.