Puppies in the Sun: Light Became Light

Some things are just meant to be. Puppies in the Sun being one of them, not only because of their fantastic moniker, but for the circumstances on how they eventually formed.

The project is comprised of Peruvian duo and childhood friends, Alberto Cendra (synthesizers) and Cristóbal Pereira (drums). Now based in Rotterdam, the pair crossed paths totally by chance when travelling in Barcelona. A six sense? Fate? An unbridled form of telepathy? Call it what you want, but out of Cendra and Pereira‘s off-chance meeting, Puppies in the Sun was born.

Follow their 2018 EPs, Unheard and The Church of Puppies in the Sun and 2019 double A-side single, Christmas Lullaby, the band bring us their debut long-player, Light Became Light. An album filled with elastic space-rock grooves, hypnotic flashes and the kind of soundscapes that split the cranium.

TENCHPRESS: Tombmagic

TENCHPRESS: Tombmagic

Recorded and mixed by Oscar Moreno at El Purgatorio in Madrid, Cendra and Pereira laid down the tracks that would compose of Light Became Light amid a two week heat wave which enveloped the Spanish capital.  

And these songs captured that humid tension, starting with Futuro. A track that comes as advertised, with a futuristic space-rock drones that hopscotch between different orbits.

With beats that throb like a bandaged wound, Hanging Heavens and Star, the Time Has Come, You Are Ready are like exploring the void. Part hypnotic, part bludgeoning, it’s either the remedy to quell a bpm panic attack or – better still – think Föllakzoid at half speed.

It doesn’t last on Raging, They Came to Dance – a laser beam drone with burning, pulsating grooves and percussion that slices through like a butcher’s blade.

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With voiceovers akin to a dispatch from another planet, the title track is again reliant on the drone as synths rumble and growl with impunity. The delivery from Puppies in the Sun is dead eyed with the kind of sonic flashes that illuminate the night skies.

The remnants are dotted throughout the final piece, A Very Short Trip Around a Supervoid. Both fitting in title and sound, it epitomises what Puppies in the Sun set out to achieve on Light Became Light. A marriage of piercing space-rock and chemically enhanced psychedelia as Cendra and Pereira skirt along the fringes of krautrock.

While Nadja has dominated 2022 in this blackened orbit of experimentalism, there have been other worthy candidates; firstly, Some Became Hollow Tubes, and now with Light Became Light, we can include Puppies in the Sun in such conversations.

Light Became Light is out now via Buh Records. Purchase from Bandcamp.