Review of Album Time Travel

With Orbital Hotel, albums follow one another at a pace that sometimes gives the impression of watching a continuous journey of discovery unfold in real time. Their works almost cross paths before having had the time to drift apart, each capturing a specific state of the project. Released before Infinito and Missing Link , Time Travel does not come across as a distant rough draft, but rather as one of many snapshots from a particularly prolific discography. Across eight tight tracks, Orbital Hotel shapes a dense and rugged space journey, far removed from the weightlessness its title might suggest.

This impression is confirmed right from Time Travel, and then with Electron and Inertia, where the guitars impose their sheer weight. Heavily saturated, thick, and at times abrasive, they don't carve out vast contemplative expanses; instead, they seem to fill them completely. Here, space is neither silent nor soothing. It becomes an environment subjected to jolts and turbulence. The rhythm section firmly maintains the course, while the often repetitive riffs instil a feeling of continuous motion.

This dynamic naturally aligns Time Travel with the stoner hypnotism of My Sleeping Karma and the space pulsations of 35007. However, Orbital Hotel favors a rawer, more compact approach. Where those bands willingly stretch their motifs, this project condenses them into short compositions dominated by heavily distorted guitars. Radiation and Wormhole thus extend the immersion into a compact sonic matter, where repetition acts less as an invitation to contemplate than as a continuous push. Even 'Requiem for a Black Hole', despite the solemnity suggested by its title, remains caught in this density.

This remarkable consistency makes the shift brought by Spacecraft all the more noticeable. Melodic and more breathing, the track stands out without breaking away from the overall atmosphere. The guitars loosen their grip slightly, revealing a less frontal, yet still hypnotic side. One can even glimpse the beginnings of what Infinito would go on to develop, through a more patient progression and a less abrasive heaviness. This late opening also highlights certain limitations of Time Travel: several ideas, captured with genuine spontaneity, sometimes feel abandoned before reaching their full potential.

Rawer and less nuanced than the albums that would follow, Time Travel nonetheless asserts an immediately recognizable identity. Its brevity, cyclic motifs, and massive guitars build a compact, at times monolithic, yet constantly moving journey. Orbital Hotel transforms space imagery into an almost physical experience, where the vacuum gives way to collisions and distortion. Not all explored paths are fully developed yet, but this spontaneity is part of the charm of a record that captures the project in its initial creative surge. An imperfect but soul-infused work, whose roughness constitutes its limits and its main strength.