AXE

I found their song "The Child Dreams" quite unexpectedly, and it really sent me to some kind of heavily psychedelic dream. The album couldn't disappoint me as well. The singer's voice is somehow typical female voice that you could imagine in prog folk scene of 70's (imagine The Pentangle, Mellow Candle and stuff like that). The music is without a doubt rich, progressive and innovative. My favorite song is "Another Sunset, another dawn" which really stands out as the most melodic and catchy track with some beautiful guitar moments. Only the intro "Here to here" might have been unnecessary track as it's a small part of "The child dreams" and also appear in live version so may get boring when you finish the listening. :) Anyway, it's definately a good choice for those who look for a bit "more proggy" kind of folk and most recommended!

This record contains quite standard US-oriented psychedelic movement cover songs performed on stage, and the focus and skills of the group is not in my opinion as good as on their studio album, which contains their own compositions. Maybe the session was performed on some small festival or party, and the set was probably nice to experience when being an actual participant. The audio quality isn't very good either, being a late sixties concert taping transcribed from a vinyl I guess. From the songs, I could mention Jefferson Ariplane covers, a band and songs which I really love, but here the band doesn't reach the fury of the original performers, and also the lady singer's voice fits better to more tender tunes I would claim. "On the Road Again" continues American hippy traits with repetitive amplified blues, which is actually a circular reference as an excuse for the quite fun monotonous jamming sequence in the middle, this reaching some tribal heights and bringing some great elements here. The raw saxophone sound and slightly clumsy jazzy wanderings also remind slightly King Crimson's "Get Thy Bearings" capture from their Epitaph record. Traffic's "Mr Fantasy" starts as a slacker blues, but contains a faster psychedelic jazzy sequence, though the changes from the composed themes are slightly awkward. The male singer also performs vocals here, and saxophone is also present. The Neil Young composition "Cinnamon Girl" carries on the same phase with boys singing and rocking a quite bland performance. Judy Collins' song "Pretty Polly" introduces Vivienne again to the microphone, and this fuzzy capture of amplified folk gem with improvised passages is one of the personal highlights here for me. Tim Rose's "Morning Dew" is also quite fun aggressive tune contrasted with tender voice and joyful horn solo.

I was very curious of finding this record, as the studio album these fellows did hit like an axe to my head. I enjoyed this record also, but only partially, and would not detect it as very impressive masterpiece. Thus I would not recommend spending your money to it before pre- listening it first carefully. But I would suggest focusing your attention to this band's fine studio record instead.

This album hit like an axe to my head, though some characteristics of the record restrained me to give it five stars. Still many songs here fit to my personal musical tastes as best as anything in psychedelic music style can do. The short intro is distributed among the album creating flashbacks of the theme, and the whole song can be heard as a poorer sound quality live version in the end of the record. The voice of the singer is soft, pleasant and untalented in classical sense, though she hits to the key well and I Iike her voice really much. The singing is present only in more calmer moments of the songs, so the band gets much instrumental space to hit the harder acid rock gear on, and the do it very well. The compositions are quite simple, more like basic frames for free playing. Also the melodic themes are very pretty, but the band does not have very broad scope, and many tunes sound like variations of quite same idea. The sound could be described as a mixture of early Jefferson Airplane, and both live jammings of Cream and The Jimi Hendrix Experience, spiced with some acid folk influences. And do not be tricked by potential association of the hit songs of the mentioned groups, Axe's music is in my opinion very experimental and certainly progressive, like the adventorous moments of the bands I compared are also. If you like good quality psychedelic stoned-out rock which expands to higher levels, leaving the fences of commercial rock standards behind, search this album and enjoy! Personal highlights are mantralike long "The Child Dreams", growing tension in very delightful way. With little more variation to the composed melodies and slighlty more better lyrical content, and maybe focusing even yet more to the hazy improvistaional playing which is present in maybe 75% of the music, this would be a real masterpiece. About the mannerism, "Strange Sights & Crimson Nights" sounds quite much like another arangement of great song "Another Sunset, Another Dawn". But even with these few lacks, this is anyhow very recommendable album to the fans of this kind of music..