CD Reviews

This is Rabbi Pinchas Rachlin's experimentation with new age electronic music. Having recorded several Carlebach style acoustic guitar albums, Power Spiritual Music is a complete shock. It sounds like a hybrid of the trance of Tel Aviv raves but with Hasidic melodies.

Several tracks feature fast beats with catchy synthesized riffs as the rabbi chants and growls out ai yai yai's. The majority of the album is ambient and hypnotic with Hebrew meditations that gel perfectly with the beat. New age and trance is often all instrumental, but the rabbi's vocals make this album one of the most haunting and tranceful things around.

Rabbi Rachlin insists that music is not thought up or planned out. It comes straight from the Almighty. In that regard this album, like his others, was recorded all in one take without any rehearsals. Virtually impossible to find in stores, Power Spiritual Music's rarity matches its uniqueness.