Leaf
2006
The Headlight Serenade
About This Album
Forging ahead from their inaugural collaboration with minimalist electronica master Jan Jelinek and the loop-based experimentation of their "solo" debut Moment Returns, the Australian group Triosk continue to wander and explore in a hazy territory that's probably best described as post-jazz. At times, they flirt with the semblance of a relatively straight-ahead modern piano jazz outfit -- opener "Visions IV" in particular evokes the muscularity of the Bad Plus, with only a couple of minor electronic flourishes. More often they sacrifice nearly all of the fundamentals of jazz (and, for that matter, most music) -- melody, all but the most basic chordal harmony, in some cases all but the vague suggestion of rhythm -- in the single-minded pursuit of texture. It's this conceptual minimalism, the absence of jazz-like forms and structures, more than the actual sound of the album, that nudges The Headlight Serenade from jazz toward the ambient/electronic category. After all, it is still predicated on improvisation, and the bulk of it consists simply of piano, bass, and drums, readily recognizable as such even when electronically tweaked. Indeed, some of these tracks gives the impression of two jazz groups playing at once: one set of musicians holding down a slow-burning, melancholy jazz vibe (a brooding waltz on "Not to Hurt You," pensive chordal meditations on "One, Twenty-Four") while another sends twitchy, rhythmically unhinged fluctuations (warped metallic clangs, scraped and plucked piano strings, willfully erratic improvising from drummer Laurenz Pike) skittering across the surface.
Track List (try tracks 1,2,5 and 8)

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