They say:
A piece of work that makes me feel unschooled, like there should be some points of reference that I’m able to draw on to convey to you, the reader, what it sounds like. But I suspect that all comparisons are questionable here, and perhaps to tell you the story and the feel is more appropriate for this ‘phantasmagoric journey’. Does it help if I tell you that David J Smith was at the helm? That Kavus Torabi, Emmett Elvin, Sam Warren and Michael J. York contributed? That I thought of Pink Floyd and Bohren Und Der Club Of Gore, Comus and GNOD and The Future Sound Of London? That will only tell you about my own limited window on the world.
The Holy Family seem to speak of the ambiguity of knowledge – Philip K Dick’s dubious, poisonous revelation, the toxic gnosis that undoes as it teaches. The ‘acid casualty’ freely invoked in accompanying notes is our guide, a charged figure, as after all don’t we love that Syd character for the second-hand glory and hubris? The purpose is perhaps to celebrate the darkened seeing we once glimpsed, and the ghosts that went ahead of us into that mist.
What is it? A detective story? A manifesto? If words are the key The Holy Family tell us of their wandering soundplaces that ‘these stylistic forays are married with relentless dream logic into one unifying kaleidoscopic vision’ and for all its unmanageable enormity and challenge, this is indeed both relentless and unified. The whole is built on fluid instrumentation, a wisdom, only what is needed for each scene. Not sure what is there at the bottom of the kaleidoscope, but we can keep looking...
Read the rest of this great review here: The Sleeping Shamen
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