My Review: Celestial Bums - Minutes From Heaven

 

Alex Dematteis 

Musicshockworld

Salford

11 February 2026

Celestial Bums - Minutes From Heaven

There is lively word of mouth in Catalonia, between the desire to have fun, to fight, to raise the gates of heaven and to be a secluded world. It concerns the emotional tension of those who, constantly changing, seek a respite and craft an oscillating, mutating soundscape, between breaths and colourful dreamlike ambitions, a picture that documents the interlocking of neo-psychedelic scores and the intention to materialise enchantment as its opposite, to captivate dream-pop ranges without ever succumbing to complacency. 

On the fourth album, we find ourselves beatified, sprinkled, lulled by flying guitars, by harmonious poems that engage and scatter petals of kaleidoscopic dizziness. The trio becomes instinctive, agglomerative, in a hallucinatory state of form in which everything works perfectly, as if the most obvious miracle were taking place in this fluid and generous moment. When lo-fi appears, we have the complete mapping of a path that establishes the extension of their abilities, amply demonstrated over the course of a career that is now fifteen years long. Without shields, without fears, without the desire to be the centre of the world, the Catalan band finds nourishing connections with the freedom that leads to inspiration, content, the need to mature with a slow swim in the Mediterranean Sea, absorbing the golden lights and bohemian feeling to create a screen, a base, a cultural form that arrives like a continuous caress. 

Japhy Ryder's singing brings together thousands of conscious streams, ranging widely, exploring his vocal cords to find his own style, the pride of someone who builds mountains with his pen. Pablo Gorostiago rides the velvet with his bass, surrounding the melody and maintaining his ability not to intrude, becoming the perfect bridge between being a captain and a wingman. He works with joy and dresses the sound with wisdom and talent. Augusto J. Marchetti uses his drumsticks with remarkable technical knowledge and a memory of listening that has undoubtedly shaped the perfection of his work, attentive to the tones, colours and moods of rhythms that know how to shake and surround the perimeter of these memorable compositions.

 Travel, identity, boundaries, memories, ideas, refuges, mental alcohol, escapades with a wise pivot converge in these orchids, in these storm surges with a firm rein, with a production that brings fog down on Barcelona without forgetting a rainbow...

More than a diary, a photograph, it seems like a collection of metaphors, stories, diamonds to wear for an evening, then discard everything and be ready for the future, like a brief but profound engraving. Many masters reveal themselves, from Low to Durutti Column to Sun Dial, passing through Bardo Pound to the fundamental fellow citizens Los Planetas, then gliding into the corridors of the soul of Love Spirals Downwards and finally to the cognitive spaces of Labradford.  This list is just a convenient form of laziness: if you travel among their seeds, you will surely savour the fermentation, the ageing, the sifting and then, like the tail stroke of a whale, waves that know how to free themselves from this combo of bands to provoke the reaction of those who know they have their own identity.     

      Flag songs, pride and genuine defence of a private meaning that makes the album a jewel to be moistened with our tears of emotion.

It is positively surprising how lightness, density, breadth and instinct are so powerful, yet retain their famous shyness: because even when the sound becomes more intense, everything appears as a veil that protects both the performers and the listeners. None of the eight compositions seeks catchy tricks, killer choruses or anything that could relegate them to easy comfort, but rather a desire, highly advocated by the Old Scribe, for mental laboratories, stages where what happens is not the search for applause but the serene embrace of those who take the notes and put them in their hearts. Soft, dancing scaffolding seeking a home, the gesture of a comfortable connection, the creatures of Minutes From Heaven do not have the bitter fate of death, presenting instead the strength of invulnerability, of lovable and comforting seals that become solid from sound.  Knowing how to take musical decades and make them elastic and welcoming might seem like a senseless utopia, but then, when you finish listening, you realise that there are sound encyclopaedias that can write the secrets of time without needing pages of paper...

The sensation is that of hearing notes that, as the minutes pass, become a floral block, cancelling out any repetitions but with the wit to drop petals into an expanding circuit, like a single song in search of friends...

Song by Song

1 - Didn't Know

Between Dream Pop and the nostalgia of a sparse Lo-fi, the album begins with an aquatic embrace, with the guitar painting waves and the tinkling of the drums evoking the feeling of autumn knocking on winter's door. The guitar rises and the vocals create a romantic revelation...

2 - The Letters

The beginning takes us back to the 1980s, a slow ride with greater openness, more choruses and a refined exercise of the six strings becoming a contagious mantra, the voice rising and seeming to cling to the clouds...

3 - Cross The Road

An entrancing, swirling moment, a wave of moral dust, which, suspended between melancholic vocals and guitar riffs in a delicate, fragrant scale, makes this track the sum of many things written in the first part of the review. It also adds hints of dark American folk noir, in a masked way but capable of suggesting different territories... 

 4 - A Dream (Guide Me From The Stars)

A faster rhythm appears, and the song's structure takes us back to the powerful moments of Sarah Records, with a long introduction before Japhy puts a gardenia in his vocal cords, while everything continues like a frosty day on the most refined dream pop...

5 - Walking On Ice

The trio exaggerates, a sin we requested and welcomed, with the writing of this song, which is a perfect and elaborate subsidiary to understanding the entire work, for a minimalist stasis that oxygenates. The dreamlike atmosphere prevails, while at the same time making metaphysical the need to give in to listening, with the singing leading into the otherworldly dimension, in complete abandonment...

6 - Blurred Loves

A poem, sung like a heavenly cry and a prayer, seeking support in the psychedelia of the American sixties, a requiem, a sweet melody, a sublime sacredness provided by the synth, careful and meticulous drumming, the bass as a thermometer and the doubling of voices that make the whole thing a timeless gem...

7 - Landslide

The album continues to grow in emotion and structure, giving us little reminders of The Doors while Low applauds with emotion. A boundless prairie where the instruments are slow runs and chases, in a neo-psychedelic flood that is associated with the least predictable slowcore, resulting in an odyssey in which the styles are sand dunes on which to drop these sweet notes...

8 - Lifeblood 

The heart stops: the ending is a guaranteed heart attack, a Gothic Renaissance gem, a perfect film for Kurosawa, a diamond waiting to be revealed and then slowly stripped bare, like magical celestial madness. We thus encounter a silence that manages to translate itself, with suspended touches of guitar, the beauty of a painful vocal harmony, slow-motion stops and starts, the almost masked sound, the presence of Television that appears like a secret party, and then that ambient film that sticks delightfully: the result estranges all chaos to become a blue cloak of feathers...

https://celestialbums.bandcamp.com/album/minutes-from-heaven