Given the fact that German heavy psych progenitors Colour Haze had to go back into the studio and completely remake their album following technical difficulties, the noise you hear at the beginning of the track “Transformation” from their long-awaited new album She Said could be construed as static — a joke playing off the perils that beset them as they were recording. In fact, it’s beach ambience recorded at the semi-official festival Duna Jam in Sardinia. Much more pleasant.

Several live clips of “Transformation” have made the rounds, but cool as they were in racheting up excitement for She Said, which follows the brilliantly jamming 2008 album All, they quality wasn’t good enough to really capture the spirit of the song. The tom runs of drummer Manfred Merwald toward the end, the oft-imitated warm fuzz of bassist Philipp Rasthoffer and the subtle nods guitarist Stefan Koglek (who also handles vocals for Colour Haze, though there are none here) makes at Natas‘ “Alberto Migre” backed by Christian Hawellek‘s Fender Rhodes keys in an a brief still moment past the 10-minute mark all speak to the trio’s ongoing development, ever-present chemistry and enduring influence over both the European and the worldwide underground.

Enough of my yak. Special thanks to Koglek for letting me host “Transformation,” which you’ll find on the player below. Please enjoy:

Here is the Music Player. You need to installl flash player to show this cool thing!

Did you hear those horns? I debated even mentioning them for ruining the surprise, but if you’re not there yet keep your ears open for when they kick in. I won’t even say when. It’s an absolute triumph, and just one of the several ways in which Colour Haze are stepping out of themselves on She Said. They keep the brass limited to “Transformation” — arrangement by Martin Homey and Georg Weisbrodt — but according to Koglek, other tracks will feature Latin percussion, a string quartet, etc. If those experiments work as well as the horns do here, we could see the ushering in of a whole new era of Colour Haze.

This mix isn’t final, but Colour Haze‘s ninth full-length, She Said, is due Nov. 2011 on Koglek‘s own Elektrohasch Shallplatten. More to come.