Finer to coarser

Something for the weekend, sir? An exclusive treat following yesterday's Pollen Trio post - for a limited time only, download the Australian post-jazz explorers' 13-minute epic p e a k s. Higher-res & CD-R still available via Bandcamp (ditto the group's earlier releases - both as PT & the Austin Benjamin Trio - & fine solo work on hellosQuare)...

Pollen Trio - p e a k s (self-released)

Forthcoming: a new PT album later this year, following Austin Buckett's extraordinary Stuttershine (extract below)...

Austin Buckett - Stuttershine (excerpt)

Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.

Fine to coarse

Pollen Trio marks a rewarding point of collision or, er, cross-pollination between two Australian lineages that LMYE (this half, anyway...) is deeply invested in - the extraordinary post-jazz trio tradition of The Necks, Triosk & 3ofmillions meeting the broader experimental church of Shoeb Ahmad's hellosQuare (our neglected label of 2010) & Ahmad/Evan Dorrian (PT)'s Spartak.

PT metamorphosed out of the Austin Benjamin Trio a while back - a transition covered in this Fluid Radio interview. Quiet for nearly two years, the trio returns in a knottier, more overtly experimental guise on the newly self-released p e a k s (full stream below) - a 13-minute epic that rattles & tinkles its loping way to a sudden intense summoning of classical PT lyricism, niftily offset by filthy synth squirts & Dorian's percussive monsoon. "We like the idea of it possesing these conflicting momentums as if alva noto, morton feldman and madvillain were being recorded improvising in soundproof rooms filtered into a PA outside," pianist Austin Buckett says.

The shift is underlined by Miroslav Bukovsky coming in for the travelling Chris Pound - an angklung an unexpected part of his armoury.

The new piece precedes an album later this year. If that can harness Peaks' distinctiveness & invention, expect to see it in LMYE's Festive 50 (the 50 releases that meant most to us during the year) for 2011 - last year's version, including several blinding hellosQuare releases, here.

pollen trio - p e a k s

Hear earlier PT/ABT highlights (including a ravishing collaboration with Seaworthy's Cam Webb), plus some great solo Buckett/Dorrian:

NB: p e a k s cover art by Elena Papanikolakis.

Important: LMYE only makes music available that artists/labels have chosen to share freely. Let us know if something here shouldn't be.