Holy River Family Band

The debut album by the Swiss unit Holy River Family Band has been in a sense years in the making. An offshoot of the brothers Arne and Jens Johanson's A Spacious Mind, HRFB is a more organic, less purposely acid-drenched effort. Utilizing guitars and effects a plenty, the trio, along with drummer Mathias Barder, pulls out the stops at instrumentation from exotic folk music such as oud, suma, hurdy-gurdy, the Turkish saz, bombo leguero, pan pipes, various flutes, violins, and found sounds. The effect is one like Ghost almost did in their earliest incarnations, but got too busy dwelling on the druggy artiness of everything. There are four cuts on this CD; each of them establishes a wandering, edgeless, frenetic groove that is fed from many different sources, some simultaneously. There are moments of edgy spiritual passion where it seems like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan may burst forth from the heaven and begin singing; in other places the drift is guided along rhythmically to a winding road that slips off a cliff into the beyond only to return once the listener has lost his or her focus. Most of the time -- particularly on the opener, "Fragrance of Flower and Herbs," and the closer "The Vision Quest of the Sanpoil" -- the sheer musical elasticity and dexterity that this trio engages in while "jamming" would be enough to win over even the most die-hard, delusional, "Jerry is coming back to the tour" Deadhead, as well as any serious music fan who is looking to be blown away by good taste, great chops, and intricate and communicable improvisation, as well as seriously engaging mind and body music. There is no one like them. ~ Thom Jurek, Rovi