The Headlight Serenade

Relative newcomers Triosk invite some obvious comparisons with The Necks, a more established Australian experimental music trio.

Both employ electronically enhanced combinations of keyboards, bass and percussion and both favor deep, languid grooves. But while it's possible that the two groups might one day meet in the middle and even cross over into each other's aesthetic territory, Triosk's work on this CD is by no means imitative and is highly commendable in its own right.

Triosk's putative leader Adrian Klumpes is a conservatory trained jazz pianist who brings a cerebral element to the music, mixing the muted, hypnotic repetition favored by The Necks with other more idiosyncratic elements.The eleven tracks on this recording reveal vestiges of early, ethereal Weather Report (sans Wayne Shorter), classic Budd/Eno collaborations and other less familiar textures.

Particularly arresting are the triggered percussive outbursts on "Headlights", which run counter to the otherwise leisurely pace of the music and the anarchic sampled and spliced mayhem which opens Fear Survivor. On the strength of this CD, it appears that Triosk has all the ingredients for a long and successful creative run, filled with surprises and sundry delights.