Bulgarian band, French label, world music. Even if you’ve never listened to Irfan, these facts tell much about the creations of the group. Their songs are a colorful bouquet of melodies and influences from the folklore musical legacy of the Balkans, the Mediterranean and the Orient. Still just a second album for the band, “Seraphim” is an extraordinary record collected inside a wide and enchanted world. The people who stand behind the wonderful music on this CD use a huge range of devices to express their art, as besides traditional percussions, acoustic guitars and violins you could enjoy some masterly parts on daf, oud, saz, tambura, darbouka and a whole pile of other weirdly sounding string and wind instruments. Without superfluous pretensions and attempts at being original, the musicians combine their talent in order to create magical and touching compositions, and on the background of the beautiful palette of sounds there rises the profound hypnotic voice of Denitza Seraphimova (who gave her place behind the microphone to the commonly talented Vladislava Todorova in 2006), which is the main reason for the similarity of Irfan with the eternal Dead Can Dance... But while the common lines with the genius duet were more covered in the self-titled debut of the Bulgarians, in “Seraphim” we already notice a solid portion of authenticity and signature in the sound. The nine songs touch deeply hidden strings in the heart and take the listener to different recesses of the world. Emotional, rhythmic, ethereal, bewitching, they possess the power to tell and enthrall, to raise and purify, to show you the charm of medieval Europe or bring you out to a ritual dance in ancient Persia. Florid, varied, united in one, the musical influences in “Seraphim” are like the particolored and heterogeneous threads, skillfully weaved in the vivid wholeness of a flying carpet, waving us high, out of time and space, driven by the musical magic of Irfan.