Sweet Smoke - From Darkness To Light 1973

The second album of the unique psychedelic jazz-rock band Sweet Smoke that celebrates its 40th anniversary surely is one of those albums which left deep and influence to rock music, but like many somehow was left behind. Although the band`s origins are from Brooklyn in New York where they have been formed in 1967, their true inspiring and creating territory was Germany. To be precise – the social community to where they moved from the USA at the end of the sixties. Like many hippy free-living communities that functioned in America and Europe, it gave many vibrations for creating a lot of good free-spirit music.  After their masterpiece debut album “Just a Poke” from 1970 (that ingeniously consisted of only two twenty-minute songs with long and technically sophisticated instrumental parts, that individually were placed on each side of the vinyl LP), they went further in

experimenting with the second. This six-song story is practically the aftermath of their first album. Five-piece band enlarged to seven members. The debut formation, that consisted of Marvin Kaminovitz (lead guitar and vocals), Andy Dershin (bass guitar), Michael Paris (tenor saxophone, alto recorder, vocals, percussion), Jay Dorfman (percussion and drums) and Steve Rosenstein (guitar and vocals) added Rochus Kuhn (violin, cello) and Jeffrey Dershin (piano, percussion, vocals) in order spread the musical possibilities. “From Darkness to Light” is more acoustic and diversified than the first one. Each of the six songs has its own stories, that create an, practically, tangible atmosphere.

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