ninehertz

If there's any doubt about how this will sound having seen the band name, artwork, or song titles (Sun Dial, Floating, Aurora), one listen removes them and confirms the sound forecast - this is light psychedelia, floating around with little care or stress. Stick with it and you realise it's pretty special too. At one point I thought along the lines of it being music made by people who want to soften the edges of Colour Haze, but this is too disparaging.

The reference is pertinent though, for in the moments it most approximates stoner rock it is Stefan Koglek's crew it inevitably hovers toward in sound. You hear it as Dance of the Nymphs revs up in a rare moment of increased tempo, and in its playfully guitar tinkering; the whole track a warming, refreshing early encounter that sets you into the album's earthly enchantment.

Entirely instrumental, it exists in a partial dream state, inviting you to zone out as you listen along, an overture it is hard to resist. There's a gratifying simplicity to the songs, clicking into their patterns and floating where they go, sails down, even when there's a hint of a change with the Eastern mysticism on Aurora. This isn't an album for thrills nor invention, more an indulgence of peacefulness that should have its time and place.

From Nyíregyháza in Hungary, and possibly a solo affair, there's little other information available on Garden of Whispers. But that just removes distraction from what is an unassuming and at times charming album of psych - at times on the stoner side, others heavy psych or space rock, more commonly even lighter than any of those suggest - but always bewitching.