What a wonderful record this is! I wasn't acquainted with the Finnish band Moonwagon, but after listening to this record I became an immediate fan. Night Dust catapulted itself in my personal top ten of 2011. This fantastic album contains seven songs with a total playing time of one hour and what kind of songs! Opener Hoodoo Horizon is a hard rock track in the vein of Black Sabbath, but played by a jazz-fusion combo. Highway To The Orange Desert is up-tempo material performed by a jam band that learned to play the music of Emerson, Lake & Palmer, while Dave Brubeck and Jan Akkerman are nodding at the side line. Oceans Away contains a hidden piece of Pink Floyd's Shine On You Crazy Diamond ; well, how cool is that? Next is a tranquil intermezzo in Super-Altar which is keyboard-driven such as could be heard on all those seventies prog rock albums. Swiftly on to the next rocker Starmask which sounds like early Floyd with a Hawkwind drive. Thunderdrift is a nice and smooth ride through the instrumental prog land and finally we get to the epic Sundown Mountain which starts mellow, again in the vein of Pink Floyd, with some Ozric Tentacles mixed in, then develops into a war chant and finally ends in a guitar fest. More references? What about Astra and Hidria Spacefolk, but than even more retro. Do I need to say more? Go out and buy this great five-star album! ***** André de Waal (edited by Peter Willemsen) Where to buy? |
