It's hard to describe the sort of movements that music evolve towithout giving it a genre name that gets used, then overused, thencompletely hated and rejected only a couple years later. I do like whatI'm hearing, however, a LOT. Trapist are the latest in a line oftalented collective players who integrate some of the elements thehigh-brow fashionable snotty music press faves have introduced over thelast couple years (software, electronic reprocessing) with honedplaying skills that can lend to collective improvisational pieces, andheavy tendencies towards actual song structure (yes, it's nice not tohear "jazz" fans noodling around with no goal). On Ballroom,the Viennese trio's first studio record, all elements come togethergracefully for an amazing listen. The trio consists of MartinBrandlmayr, Martin Siewart, and Joe Williamson: names which haveappeared in Radian, and alongside people like Christian Fennesz, DeanRoberts and Werner Dafeldecker, Stefan Schneider, Ken Vandermark, KevinDrumm, and plenty more. Comparisons will no doubt be drawn to thesparse guitar work of quieter Tortoise and Angelo Badalamenti andgroups like Nudge and latter-day Talk Talk, but Trapist tend to explorethings a bit deeper, with songs that stretch well past the 15 minutemark as opposed to collecting between eight and ten 3-5 minute tunes.Songs often open with light brushed drum sounds, double bass andguitar, but are soon joined with unobtrusive keyboards, subtleelectronic effects, percussion, and rhythmic noise. While Ballroomis already one of my most frequently played albums of the young year,it's not hard to wonder if this stuff will catch on. Bands and criticsmay complain about the post-rock pigeonholing but it did provide somesort of attention and leverage to a lot of groups' budding careers. Ifthis stuff never catches on, it'll be difficult for a number of reallygreat groups to book shows, get out of their remote areas (Dean Robertsis in Australia, Nudge is in Oregon) and help evolve music to the nextlevel.samples:
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