MUSIC

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..