The Night Is Still Young

Biography

The Night Is Still Young – Universal Boundaries.

Exactly eight months after the release of his debut album "King of the Bees" comes the second album by Marco Naef, aka "The Night Is Still Young." The release of that first album after over ten years of work seems to have unleashed a surge of creativity – even if the title of the new album might suggest otherwise: "Universal Boundaries". His concerns with the man-made constraints and routines that establish boundaries for us as individual beings have not discouraged Naef but encouraged him and propelled him to produce a successor in the same year as his debut. This is the pinnacle of a very productive year for him, with the release of four recordings (with three bands) in twelve months: Don‘t Kill The Beast's "Cupid Bite"; The Night Is Still Young's "King Of The Bees"; KaxXxor's "The Glory Hazz"; and The Night Is Still Young's "Universal Boundaries".

"Ivory Tower", the mid-tempo number chosen as a single from the four songs on "Universal Boundaries", sounds almost cheerful as it gingerly cooks up a place of purity free of everything worldly. But such withdrawal is not an alternative for anyone who has learned to see. So in the end, the song swallows itself and is gone as if it had never existed.

Throughout this album, it is clear that Naef is not someone who takes it easy in life. For him, composing and writing songs is a kind of personal catharsis. In the forty minutes of these four songs, you pick up on how his pain is dispelled by sounds and serenely disappears into dreamy musical landscapes that stretch out for minutes on end. You sense with him how sweet certainties can be unveiled as bitter illusions: "Where did it all go wrong? I'm out, I'm gone to Babylon." With these lines, the album comes to a close. When exactly did we take that wrong turn? This unanswered question lingers after Naef has taken you along on this journey through his life and the society whose musical image he sketches. This contemporary manifesto is multilayered and critical, a musical metaphor for Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights. Yes, there is much to be discovered here, for those who listen closely.

In a few short months, The Night Is Still Young has evolved further; the result is lush compositions with arrangements full of lovingly cultivated details. The style is still Americana with psychedelic sounds, with Jonathan Wilson and Pink Floyd among the unmistakable musical motivators of this second album by The Night Is Still Young.
"Universal Boundaries" is the album of a mature master; from the artwork to the songs, it issues its insistent summons: pay attention. "No more pleasure without torture."