In The Night was the second album Koln based musical collective Dunkelziffer put out back in 1984. This album has Damo Suzuki as main vocalist and is every bit as weird and out there as the first album Colours And Soul. The main musical collective remains the same as on the first album.
The album opens with the heavy heavy dub sounds of Watch On My Head that has an Observers style one away feel to it as I can almost sing along to it.
Sunday Morning sadly isn't a Velvet Underground cover but instead opens channeling Alice Coltrane afro futurism into an Alpha Blondy goes dance dub song it shouldn't work but it does.
Retrospection is a 13 minute plus journey into funky dub with some wailing sax, there's a manic piano part and the ever-insistent beat driving it along as we float out as the vocals come in and disappear for long stretches like they have wandered off to roll a spliff between verses and as the first toke hits and takes effect the song mellows down easy and floaty and Damo's vocals become more abstract.
The B-side opens with Q a floaty free form jazz dub with the odd electronica element and the cool as can be sax that Damo sort of sings sort of raps over with Helmutt Zerlett acting as a vocal foil.
(Do What You Can) Prof. is mad as a march hare psycho jazz punk like a more out of your mind Blurt with a dangerous kinetic dub undertow the sort of song I'd imagine John Peel really liking for how strange it all is.
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I See Your Smile opens like a cool summer pop song that soon takes a wrong turn or two but does have a really poppy set of vocals from Damo, which is really unlike the sort of stuff I'm used to hear him singing, this is the most commercial song on either of the first two Dunkelziffer albums.
The album closes by taking us down to the Oriental Cafe with a 10 minute plus monster of a tune with full on tribal drumming with odd staccato keyboard runs and eerily haunting Oboe that weaves between the vocal chants, that adds a real trance like Tribal Gathering feel to this, as the keyboards have a sort of weird edge, like they are from a different sphere to everything else, yet integral to what it's doing which as with everything else on this album is playing with your mind and perceptions.
Find out more at https://shop.tapeterecords.com/records/bureaub/dunkelziffer-in-the-night.html
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