Over a decade later, fans are still flocking to hear Sun Structures in all its strange, mind-melting glory.

“We don’t consciously aim to be extreme psychedelic,” James Bagshaw and Sam Toms of Temples told The Mic. “but we love the sound and the way it’s treated. For us, it’s a type of journey, the way we create our music. In our live shows we just want the crowd to experience that same sort of journey.”

In December 2014, as a young and dumb 18-year-old, I’d only been to a handful of gigs, and Temples’ headline spot at Kentish Town Forum was one of my earliest experiences at a smaller venue. It’s safe to say that they succeeded in taking all of us crammed into the Forum that night on a “journey”. You had this swirling, shimmering wall of psychedelia blasting from the speakers; these mysteriously backlit figures, all with hairstyles from a bygone era; ethereal vocals about the “dawn of creation” and “crimson moonrises” and “ritualistic signs upon the desert sea”. This performance left a real impression on me, and Sun Structures – Temples’ debut album – still finds a way to come back on rotation all these years later.

And it seems like other fans similarly still hold it in the same high regard. Temples are currently back on the road to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Sun Structures, with the band playing the album in its entirety at a number of shows across the US, before heading back to Europe to visit Turkey, Bulgaria, Portugal and Spain. Not only that, the 10th birthday is also being marked by the release of a 6-track EP, Other Structures. These unreleased songs were left on the cutting room floor during the making of Sun Structures, and could all easily slot right into the tracklist – a testament to how distinct Temples’ sound was on their debut. Also on the Other Structures EP are a couple remixes of ‘Shelter Song’, reworked by Robert Leven Been and Kasabian’s Serge Pizzorno, with the latter morphing the single into an electronic floorfiller.

Before you even start listening to Sun Structures, the album cover sets the tone, with this weirdly-shaped, gothic castle against a clear blue sky. It turns out this is in fact a local landmark for the band, based in a village outside Kettering. “It’s five minutes from our houses,” Bagshaw told Under the Radar back in 2014. “We picked it for the cover because it was local to our town. It’s a three-sided building, which is very odd. It’s what is known as a folly, which is a building without any purpose. It wasn’t lived in.” From the album cover, you then turn your attention to the tracklist, with titles like ‘The Golden Throne’ and ‘Sand Dance’ and “Mesmerise” adding to the mystical feel.

Once you get round to actually listening to it, you’re ready to be transported on this mindbending, fantasy-inspired journey, rooted in ancient folklore – and that’s exactly what you get. The fuzz and twang of the guitars is straight out of the 60s, complimented by shimmering keys, organs and harps that add atmospheric, Arabic-inspired touches. The influence of early psychedelic pop pioneers like The Beatles and The Zombies is plain to see in the choruses and hooks – especially on the opener ‘Shelter Song’, the album’s lead single – but at the same time, there are tracks with faster, thudding basslines that are reminiscent of Tame Impala’s Innerspeaker. You get big walls of noise, layers of sound that twist and turn and build until, like with ‘Sand Dance’, it culminates in a crescendo that leaves you rattled.

This is all carried along by Bagshaw’s lilting vocals, perfectly suited to deliver the poetic, sometimes haunting lyrics: “Astral shapes / Breaking in fragment's light / Breaking into the night”. Bagshaw made it clear in their Under the Radar interview that Temples “love mystical imagery. We certainly having a visual identity. Anything that’s surreal and has a mythical sense to it, we just like strong imagery.” Sometimes – like on ‘A Question Isn’t Answered’ and the title track – words are swapped out for chants, with the other members adding their harmonies. These moments work perfectly to unite the crowd in a chant-a-long during their live shows, making fans feel like they’re part of whatever folk ritual the band are conducting.

Sun Structures was mostly met with critical acclaim; it immediately propelled Temples into the upper echelon of new British bands, topping Rough Trade’s heralded Album of the Year list for 2014. There were some that felt it lacked personality, due to how Temples recreated sounds from 60s psychedelia with “painstaking, granular attention to detail”. It’s true that the band wear their influences proudly for all to see, but it can also be argued that it’s this commitment in a 2014 setting that set Temples apart. Everything about them – from their band name, to the album cover, to the track titles, to the sonic journey of the music – worked towards creating their mystical, trippy image, and it was unlike anything else on offer at the time. Temples emerged as an exciting, acid-tinged breath of fresh air, evidenced by the fact that over a decade later, fans are still flocking to hear Sun Structures in all its strange, mind-melting glory. Fingers crossed they head back to Kentish Town sometime soon…