Progressive Rock
OSKAR Records · 30 March 2026
The band’s name is “trio” plus “Mellotron”, and track five is called “Melloreed” (3:45), so there isn’t much doubt about where the centre of this record is. Terra Tiempo arrives thirteen years after Funfair Fantasy: twelve tracks, sixty minutes, and almost all of it instrumental.
Menno Boomsma plays drums, Eddie Mulder bass and guitars and Edo Spanninga keys; the last two come from Flamborough Head. The bass sits well forward in the mix, which is uncommon on a record planted on keyboards, and the guitar acts as the melodic voice on “The Return Of Jemetrion” (4:38) and “Far Away” (5:04). The opening track carries the album title and works as an overture in the literal sense: the instruments come in one after another.
Of the twelve tracks, only two carry vocals, and the drummer sings them: “Red Dust” (7:13), the longest piece here, and “Growing Clouds” (3:21), one of the shortest. On a record conceived as instrumental they are two additions nothing asked for, and the DPRP critic who has followed the band since Pilgrim admits he skips them.
A band named after an instrument of texture, returning after thirteen years with an hour of music, never once allows itself a long piece: the maximum is the 7:13 of “Red Dust”, and nine of the twelve tracks fit between 3:21 and 5:23. The song format carries sixty minutes on the trio’s craft alone, but the Mellotron had more to say than the clock allowed it.
Twelve tracks, sixty minutes and thirty-eight seconds. Before Funfair Fantasy came Tortoise (2003) and Pilgrim (2007), both reviewed at the time by DPRP.
Rating: 7.1/10
Text by Guillem Cardós