Search - Triosk :: Moment Returns

Reconfiguring the piano trio

Jan P. Dennis | Monument, CO USA | 07/07/2006

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The piano trio, that venerable instrumental jazz format, has undergone some rather radical makeovers recently: MMW's funk-jazz, The Bad Plus's punk-jazz, The Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey's jam-band jazz, numerous Latin-jazz outings (among the best, Ed Simon's two discs, Chucho Valdes's New Conceptions, Ramon Valle's No Escape, and Danilo Perez's Panamonk), various outish offerings (e.g., Triptych Myth, with the brilliant Cooper-Moore, Dave Burrell's Expansion, the John Law trio, the Susie Ibarra Trio, John Wolf Brennan's diverse trio explorations, Mephista, Myra Melford's Dance Beyond the Color, Jonas Tauber's Prime Numbers), ECM's ravishingly romantic piano trios (including non-ECM artists such as Kenny Werner and Alan Pasqua), the wunderkind piano trio (Hiromi, Taylor Eigsti, Eldar Djangirov), and the technique-out-the-wazoo-but-still-very-listenable piano trio (Jean-Michel Pilc and Jacky Terrasson).



Now for something completely different: The electronica-jazz piano trio.



Of course, the wedding of electronica and jazz is nothing new, especially in music coming from Britain and the Continent. But, as far as I know, an electronica-jazz trio IS something new. Plus, these guys are Aussies, so that's even more special. Additionally, a lot of what they do is in real time, so what they produce in the studio (apparently--I haven't seen them in concert) can be essentially realized in live performance.



What does it sound like? Hmmmmm . . . Tough to describe, but I'll give it a shot. Alva Noto and Opiate meet Sigur Ros with a little Chris Gestrin thrown in. That is, gorgeous, dreamy soundscapes punctuated with electronic glitches, drones, blips, squeaks, and pops combined with conventional acoustic instrumentation (i.e., piano/Rhodes, bass, drums, and vibes). Very evocative. The key here is that these lads seem to have achieved a genuine melding of electronica and jazz in a real-time, essentially piano-trio setting. There's so much interesting stuff going on here that even though I've listened to this disc scores of times, I always hear something new.



I can't tell you how taken I am by this disc. I believe it truly represents a major step forward in music. But it's far more than just a brilliant experiment: Triosk's unique combination of sounds produces music that is at once mesmerizing, haunting, and achingly beautiful, with enough rigor and spine to keep it from becoming merely pretty or tedious. And although it's a little short, clocking in at just under 40:00, there's so much going on musically that, from the standpoint of pure enjoyment, it seems like a steal. This is one of few discs I own that I often play several times in a row.



Altogether captivating."