Cliff Art is a little hard to describe. So, let's start with the basics. The band has two members, Stuart Mawler and C. Laufer. The music is instrumental. The duo plays Appalachian Lap Dulcimer, 8-string bass, and a Chapman Stick. (A Chapman Stick is an instrument combining guitar and piano, played with both hands on the fingerboard using a tapping technique utilizing the lower strings on the left and the higher strings on the right. Stuart Mawler provided this description).
That is about all that is easily explainable. And I think that is what really make this music special.
Jazzy yet experimental, foreign yet familiar, Cliff Art is a whole new sound. The influences present throughout the CD are many and varied, ranging from the Far East to backwoods banjo picking.
"Two Halves" ranges across a landscape from ethereal dreamy chords on the harpsichord to a new age pattern-rich experimentation on the bass. The soothing designs the song creates in the air and in the mind are complicated, yet still hark back to something primeval inside of the listener.
The CD is rich and varied, shifting from the light, airy Japanese - bluegrass - banjo -waltz on "Dancing With The Moon", to a sorrowful - feeling - journey of confusion and release represented beautifully by the instruments on "And So Tomorrow", and then on to an old fashioned ode on "Jean's Waltz" that feels like a summer day spent meandering through billowing fields.
The music on "Elephants of the Monsoon Tomorrow" is interesting and relaxing. It can be background music if you want it to be, or can be a weave of music you wrap yourself in and get lost among. The band and their stylings are like their namesakes; simple drawings in the back of hidden caves, yet still able to touch, resonating with so much mystery.