"Disappeared" is a series of improvisations broken into days 1-9. The music has a tactile feel throughout due to a stellar recording and the players' use of extended techniques. The sounds are so intimate it's possible to imagine oneself inside their instruments.
On Day 1 Sten Sandell's piano tentatively plucks out the opening blue chords while FLH's cello eeks out scrapes and screams and Zerang's fractured percussion rattles beneath. Space and density alternate to share top billing here, further adding to the unfolding story as sounds find their dedicated niche in the frequency spectrum and then blur with others in furious disharmony.
Day 2 opens with dark piano chords and guttural vocalese, punctuated with surprise cello and chiming, fizzing cymbals. Things quickly become crucially minded, with smears of strings and tightrope walking keys, like the soundtrack to an old cartoon. The percussion has a scraped, tumbling approach with little eddies of action and non action dangling above the other players' movements.
Day 3 whirrs and pops its way to fruition with duo drums and cello playing hide and seek until Sandell ends the game with an authoritative chord. The chase continues as some spirited improvisation takes shape and their open musical spaces close in on each other. Piano notes slowly roll downhill, striking bits and bobs of string and drum along the way until landing on a new sonic landscape of near silent bowing and tickled skins.
Day 4 features more throaty gibberish and flicked and poked rhythmic interplay. The vocals alternate between drawn out yearning tones and quickly modulating consonants.
Day 8 is a frenetic mess for the most part, in the best possible sense. The trio spends the better part of the track in a musical slap fight, seemingly antagonizing each other into uncomfortable spaces that lead the way to some dazzling moments.
This trio play intriguing music and use a wide array of approaches, pushing and pulling each other into a series of sonic mini dramas, Like all good improv, these songs unfold in logical episodes that are at times serene and intense, and as rewarding for the listener as the musicians.
Comments and Feedback:
| 
