Hazmat Modine is as distinctive a band as a listener will ever find. It is, essentially, a project of artistic polyglot, Wade Schuman. Fans can decide whether or not they wish to purchase a Wade Schuman project, based on complete information, but at the end of the day, Schuman aside, nobody sounds like Hazmat Modine. It would be easier if the band were bad, but they're not. Since Bahamut, the band has carved out its own path, and even more impressively, found new spaces on sequential albums. Whether that meant working with Tuvan throat singers, and then later the Gangbe Brass Band, and so on, or here, the band grows.The trick here really is Balla Kouyate. The balafon player gives the album its distinctiveness, separate from any of the band's prior projects. Hazmat Modine continues to play in the space between blues, jazz and various world music styles like no other, but what is truly fascinating here is that Kouyate does more than merely incorporate an African element. He can draw the band from reggae beats to East Asian sounds with the ease of a true master of every style the band has ever encountered. From the moment it starts, a listener cannot mistake Box of Breath for anything but a Hazmat Modine album, but Kouyate's playing adds breadth and new dimensions, making the album valuable for its own sake, while showing how impressive the project is for the growth that it continues to seek, even when Bahamut itself was just so astonishing.Really, to have a through line from Bahamut to this... the vision is truly astonishing. Decide for yourself here, all things considered, but the band is as unique as any out there.Further listening: Heritage Blues Orchestra, Tin Hat Trio, Pierre Dørge.