The depth Daniel Shams of Heliotricity is able to achieve with his guitar, voice and poetry is astounding. With his wide range and agile falsettos his voice has been compared to Tim Buckley, who no doubt he was unconsciously channeling in the exquisite track “Helium”. One hears hints of Jeff Buckley, Thom Yorke, as well as Nick Drake at times. It is a voice agile and aspiring, reaching for the universal, the common threads connecting all people. You get the sense also of an urgency listening to Daniel, a striving that reveals a relentlessness in his pursuit of an immediate, articulate and pure expression.
The result is that his recordings then are more like raw jewels excavated from deep fissures, they aren’t overly polished and pretty in the sense some people prefer. They are the real thing. And when he sings of love, it is not to a woman, it is to all women. It is as if the great Sibyls are resurrected at once. When one listens they live love for that instant. www.heliotricity.com