NIGHT

Well, well. Night is really a thoroughly nice album. Nice in that way that it always keep a respectable distance to your life and conscience, never dreaming of interfering or challenging your existence. It isn't a soulless album, far from it; it's full of emotion, but only of one single kind. After a while it gets as repetitive as a Scandinavian winter, and sadly just as interesting.

Gazpacho doesn't suffer from any problem when it comes to creating dense atmospheres. The sound is literally drenched in some kind of nocturnal, melancholic, thick keys-created landscape, one that evokes feelings of cold and naked lands while it's still almost hypnotizing at times. I'd describe it as slightly post-rockish. At least based on the little I've heard from that genre. On many of the songs the guitar is mostly used in creating a beat for the swirling keys on top it. Repetitive drums, guitar and bass.no, repetitive structures form that droning whole I find very hard to tolerate. It's not getting any better as the beautiful, almost feminine voice of Jan Henrik Ohme lays down on top of the music as an ethereal veil of smoke, or perhaps more fitting in this case, as the slowly moving Northern Lights. Really slow build-ups, adding small, but noticeable changes almost every single repeat. Be it a delicate little chord work on the guitar, some choir effects, piano, a mini solo or just an empowered metal-ish power chord version of what happened last time. Eventually the atmosphere is quite rich with all sorts of sounds, something that you actually might miss the first few listens, just because everything moves so painstakingly slow.

Apart from the ambience-oriented parts (plenty) there are some better, metal-ish, Scandinavian folk and Neo-Prog dramatic parts (fewer) here. Very enjoyable, but still often part of the cold, electronic soundscape. The closing song of the album, Massive Illusion might be my favourite in the mix, with outspoken acoustic guitar, some change in the vocal department nice keys and for a change: a driving element. Nice and sad violin ending it for that extra touch.

I guess you realise that I don't think this is all bad. That's how objective I'm prepared to be. If you don't have a problem with ambience-filled, droning atmosphere and.well, atmosphere at the expense of virtuoso performance, for all it's worth, then you should love this album. It's heavily arranged, with lots of precision and electronic influences and as such very successful.

For me: 2 stars. Fans only.

//LinusW