DAY AND NIGHT

Yesterday and today I have listened to this year's record "Day and night" by the Swedish art rock band Dynamo Bliss. The record is the band's third one. The first came 2010 and the second earlier this year. This band certainly plays in the prog rock tradition even if it is not actually progressive. The musicians are Mikael Sandström (guitars, banjo, accordion and pedal steel), Stefan Olofsson(vocals, keyboards, zither, guitar, bass, percussion) and Peter Olofsson(drums) and the band comes from Umeå in northern Sweden.

Day and Night is a very cheerful work that pleases my ears a lot. I don't find any of that modern too heavy sound in this, on the contrary this music is soft and cool. It feels that their music is a mixture of 10cc's jolly melodies and vocal harmonies: intriguing and happy, and Pink Floyd's atmospheric background with a light melancholic guitar. Those two sides of Dynamo Bliss music is perhaps a part of the album's name: day and night and the cover shows a silhouette of a tree with both a blue and a orange background. The band name is designed to look a bit "Russian" and I find it attractive.

The music is inspiring and as a fan of both 10cc and Pink Floyd I of course like it. The really interesting features is the long tracks. "Circadian Rhytm" is best with its lovely melody and great vocals and enough of both darkness and light to get me into it. "Solemn undulating wave" is almost as good as that track and I also like the catchy "The day the empire fell" with a main line that I'll remember. "Night Storm" is totally different: here they have taken inspiration from jazz music and made an instrumental soundscape of good quality. I don't think the short songs are so interesting but they are nice to listen to. Some of them are great instrumental works for just acoustic guitar and of course we need stuff like that. My main interesting though lies in the long(real) songs.

I find this music so enjoying that I will give it four stars. Also, I do not doubt to say that this is the best Swedish "prog" album of 2013, until now.