Holy Mountain, the debut instrumental full-length from Irish finger-style guitarist Dave Whitcroft, is a varied and complex contemplation on the human condition and search for meaning. The album spans a range of offerings from a very literal picture of “Kathmandu”—the busy and chaotic capital of Nepal—to the more introspective “Amazing Grace” and

Holy Mountain, the debut instrumental full-length from Irish finger-style guitarist Dave Whitcroft, is a varied and complex contemplation on the human condition and search for meaning. The album spans a range of offerings from a very literal picture of “Kathmandu”—the busy and chaotic capital of Nepal—to the more introspective “Amazing Grace” and rumination on the divine. Buoyant and energetic tracks like “Kathmandu” and “Centrifuge” are contrasted with meditative instrumentals, and the album is a unique amalgamation of Whitcroft’s musical influences with notes of folk, soul, blues, and world music.

The project’s cornerstone is the mountain; transcendent and ‘otherly’, a place apart, mountains exist undefined and unperturbed by life on the human scale. They remind us of the vastness of time and creation. Mountains are revered as holy places in many cultures: the site of tragic offerings to eternity in the mountains of South America, temples and prayer flags in the Himalayas, and places to fearfully skirt around in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. Burial mounds and small monuments were left at mountain sites by Neolithic peoples, and in the Christian Era mountains have been crowned with crosses.

In the words of Whitcroft, “Hopefully as you listen to the interplay of fragility, beauty, and adrenaline in this project, you’ll be transported back to that sense of otherness or holiness, the awareness of something greater that you experienced at key moments of your life... perhaps on a mountain or at the birth of a child.”