‘The Headlight Serenade’ is the third album from Triosk, following 2004’s celebrated ‘Moment Returns’ (Leaf), and their 2003 collaboration with Jan Jelinek, ‘1+3+1’ (~scape). The Australian trio is made up of Adrian Klumpes, Laurence Pike and Ben Waples. Laurence and Adrian are members of widely acclaimed Sydney band Pivot. ‘The Headlight Serenade’ will sit alongside the best albums from contemporaries Four Tet, The Cinematic Orchestra, The Necks and Tortoise, and is an incredible exploration of the journey of light and its fleeting moments.
Such a balance of light and darkness is key to ‘The Headlight Serenade’s heady attractions. The title (and the album’s artwork) is derived from “the transitory way that headlights pass across objects, creating split second moments and alternate spaces in time” says the group’s Laurence Pike. “I find that really fascinating.” Each piece on the album is the soundtrack to a passing glimpse of a particular moment, memory or feeling, be it a past-life romance or the sensation of lying in a boat, looking at the stars. “Light can bring many different things into focus, creating a microcosm of detail and perspective that you never knew existed.”
On Triosk’s last album, ‘Moment Returns’ (2004), much of the material followed the compositional style of their previous collaboration with Jan Jelinek, ‘1+3+1’ (improvised over pre-recorded loops). This time the band had the luxury of working through ideas more fully, often basing pieces on recordings of their own improvised live performances, picked apart and honed to perfection, morphing musical forms usually associated with jazz and presenting them in entirely new ways.
Using ‘Moment Returns’ as a blueprint, tracks like “One, Twenty-Four”, “Lost Broadcast” and the album’s epic 11-minute centrepiece, “Lazyboat”, have a similarly open-ended, non-linear feel to them that was established on the previous album. But this time out, pieces like “Visions IV”, “Not To Hurt You” and “Headlights” took on a more conclusive linear 'song' structure: something new for the band.
“Sometimes I think we left things undone or unsaid on ‘Moment Returns’, which I guess gives it its charm,” says pianist Adrian Klumpes, “But I think this new one has a well-rounded, full and more complex aesthetic.”
Triosk’s inventiveness and enthusiasm to rethink musical boundaries makes ‘The Headlight Serenade’ a striking, living work. Rarely is such cerebral music so engaging.
