r e v i e w s Quiver - AMG All-Media-Guide AMG Expert Review AMG Rating **** (Best-of-Artist) By Darryl Cater Monk is not so much a band as a notebook for the musical doodlings of guitarist Ric Hordinski. In 1997 Hordinski left the band he helped to found, Over the Rhine, to pursue a career as a producer and songwriter. Quiver is in effect his debut solo album. Hordinski shuffles about a small supporting ensemble, alternating between two bass players and two drummers (including OTR's Brian Kelley). The songs smartly blend a number of Hordinski's influences, including the Beatles, Bruce Cockburn, Phil Keaggy, and David Wilcox (who appears on the album). But those ghosts inhabit an ambient guitar atmosphere which is pure Hordinski. Using fancy fret work and digital effects, he produces an inordinate variety of different guitar sounds -- sonorously quivering vibrato, aggressively buzzing grunge, cleanly shimmering beams of ambiance, and rushes o bf reverberating rhythm which bounce from wall to wall like Speedy Gonzales on fast-forward . . . There are some transcendent recordings here, including most of the instrumentals which pepper the album, and the lead track ("Womb of God"), which spins a lulling web of shimmering guitar and winding violin as its lyrics uneasily nestle into a peace which passes understanding.