Holy Family,The - The Holy Family (Sealed) (CD)

A surreal odyssey into dimensions unknown, the debut album by The Holy Family has arrived to bewitch and delight. The scope of 'The Holy Family' is boundless. It's an intrepid voyage through sound-worlds, as This Heat-esque polyrhythms, spidery zeuhl, oceanic kosmische, blissful Robert Wyatt-via-Talk Talk-esque pastoral and even Lalo Schifrin-esque celluloid-score tension are visited in search of some greater universal truth. Yet all of these stylistic forays are married with relentless dream logic into one unifying kaleidoscopic vision. The aesthetic of The Holy Family evolved naturally via first improvisation and then a very meticulous crafting of the raw material. Recording sessions involved Smith and his cohorts - including longtime collaborators Kavus Torabi, Emmett Elvin, Sam Warren and Michael J. York - retreating to "an old house in the country well stocked with the requisite fine wines and jazz cigarettes" to lay down tracks that were then sculpted into their eventual form by Smith and engineer/mixer Antti Uuismaki, for approval and final overdubs from the rest of the collective. Mercurial and mystical yet charged with primal energy, this is a classic double album as forum for chimerical experimentation - shifting in form and structure every time it travels from the record racks to the stereo, and revealing yet more psychic landscapes with each listen. Submit to its spell, and join Family.