THE NIGHT

The Night is the new album by Dave Schmidt, a German guy now living in Austria, and once again he has produced five tracks worth of totally amazing, psychedelic music. Dave plays all the instruments by himself, but Stefan Koglek from Colour Haze sings on the second part of the long title track.

The album is started in a great way with the totally instrumental, rather slow, melodic and atmospheric "In Space" that has very pleasant guitar work and lush keyboards plus little psych sounds. "Lost in Space" rocks more already and is a pretty tight and hypnotic space/kraut rock number that also includes some spacey, quiet vocals. Wow! The fifteen-and-a-half-minute long "The Night" is formed of four parts. At first there is some more experimental, weird soundscapes until the slow-paced and brilliant part with Stefan's beautiful vocals reminding of some 70's prog/psych/kraut rock acts begins. After a short brake starts off the bit faster, rather progressive and melodic part in ¾ time. How incredible moods! The last six minutes go by in a peaceful haze in the spirit of Pink Floyd, although Dave makes the track grow a bit in the post rock style at one point. Totally amazing stuff! "Meteorrit" begins slowly but soon it gets into repetitive kraut rocking. This reminds me a bit of 90's Circle. The album is finished with the over 16-minute long "Kosmokrator" that is a really cosmic but hypnotically rocking space rock piece. At times the going gets pretty heavy as well, but the last minutes are hallucinatory, very spacey ambient.

It's too early for me to say if The Night is the best Sula Bassana album yet, but it sure is excellent. It seems to me that Dave has progressed nicely especially in his guitar playing and the music is of course guaranteed psychedelia. This album is supposed to be coming out on vinyl as well, and it's worthwhile also to get the first Sula Bassana 7" that has just been released on Nasoni!