Glowing review from Minor 7th
"Talk about a concept album! British singer/songwriters and fingerstyle phenoms Daryl Kellie and Jon Hart embarked on a musical tour on the Thames, traveling via a "narrowboat"-that also just happens to serve as Kellie's home. These two prodigious talents, who have solo careers as well as backgrounds in numerous bands, crowdfunded the money to produce Set Adrift, their first joint effort, with music crafted from that excursion. Their backgrounds are eclectic-heavy metal, jazz, and, for Kellie, classical- but the guitar work derives primarily from the progressive acoustic guitar tradition of Michael Hedges, Preston Reed, and Andy McKee. Overall the CD is moody, multilayered, and jazz-influenced, with ample use of natural and artificial harmonics. It includes six pieces whose titles relate directly to the watery theme, and four that go with the flow in a different way. Kellie and Hart are distinctive vocalists, as displayed on the beautiful version of Hart's "Father" (from his CD Reborn), Kellie's "Wintersong," and the scat-like "Englishman in New York" with its sly lyrics (I'm an illegal alien"). But perhaps even more impressive are their arrangements and intuitive interplay; they sound like one guitarist with twenty nimble fingers (though sometimes, as in "Downstream," Kellie plays a differentiating harp guitar). The title track, with an ominous heavy metal aura, and "The Lock" have river-related lyrics, but even on the instrumentals-from bluesy virtuostic "High Tide" to atmospheric Ripples" to "Little Drifter" (perhaps an homage to McKee's "Drifting")-we feel the easeful meditative ebb and pull of the water. Clearly, by being set adrift with just their instruments, Kellie and Hart tapped into a vibrant creative flow. With results like this, one can only hope these two versatile musicians take to the seas for many more musical adventures."
© Céline Keating