Concert Review: Trioglodyte at Wine Cellar, 1 April 2021

Free Jazz. Bring a free mind and your ass will follow. A near-spiritual experience if you let it in. Trioglodyte are a triumvirate and once a month they get together for the cognoscenti, those who have been experienced, and those intrigued, as I am, for the first time.

The core trio is led by Jeff Henderson, playing saxophones, flutes and recorder tonight. A well-respected musician on the underground improvised music scene in New Zealand and has been responsible for bringing out many Jazz players from around the world to play here. Chris O’Connor on drums is also an improv player. Has collaborated with a vast number of Kiwi musicians and played as a band member for Phoenix Foundation and Surfin USSR. Eamon Edmundsen-Wells plays double bass, whom I last saw bending notes with Shindig, a trio who play Old-Time Country Americana.    

Tonight, their two guest musicians are Karen Hu and Larsen Taylor, both behind drum kits.

The opening tune is Good Old Days but from there it’s best just to lie back and let the ravaging begin. A discordant saxophone preaches like an angry street schizophrenic. The three drummers just seem to be loose and all over and around each other. The bass player is just fast.

It’s all freeform and it appears to be in harmolodic time. Rapid-fire Be-Bop saxophone instantly reminds me of Trout Mask Replica, Mirror Man and Ornette Coleman.

The drums blend and merge into an other-worldly wall of sound. The cymbals attack, or are attacked. It is hard to know which. Elemental, undifferentiated noise at times from which the saxophone breaks the surface with some fast riff- tunes.

The acoustic bass plays hard and manages to vibrate the concrete Cellar floor! How did they do that? A shout out to the always stellar sound-man.

After the hurricane the saxophone quietens everything down and it’s subtle and eerie. We are straining to hear something which is going to unsettle us. Industrial metal-insect music, ghostly and foggy. Ominous mood music for a night stalker.

Come back in with Africa. A cowbell from O’Connor and that low bass is hitting the harmonic frequency of the floor again. The phrasing is slightly funky. Afro-Jazz Funk. The alto saxophone is sending out short blasts, like a truck horn. Switches to baritone and deeper squawks leading to hypnotic riffing.

Drums head back into a melded barrage from which each of the three pull out charming and soothing riffs rising and falling back continually. A catharsis in rhythm.

The saxophone surfaces only to lead in the bass who proceeds to shred. Slows it down to walk and bends those notes.

There is no real break but a flute is out and this is the Afro-Mississippi sound of Fife and Drum. Hypnotic trance music. A plastic recorder is brought out.

Wild animals and beasts growl. This leads the way for the three drums to come barreling back talking and riffing. In the real jungle groove. The baritone sax is back like a Mac truck sounding the horn. Switching to the alto and a mutant animal screeching settles into a nice melody to finish the first set.

Absolutely exhilarating and thrilling. The music seems to exist in parallel times. It sort of looks chaotic, but the sound you hear has a structure and form which feels like a constantly changing abstract painting or movie.

I could go on but you get the picture. Or you don’t. I could recommend this to any number of friends. But if they’re women, don’t be surprised if they rise up in anger and don’t talk to you again for many months.

The second set is just as extraordinary and the seated audience tonight are all aficionados. More people join the room.

The two titles for the set are Lonely Woman and Black Unity.

The drums start hostilities again, laying down a soundscape which melts away when the saxophone player finally lifts the mouthpiece to his gob and lays out long haunting tones.

Beefheart and Coleman and Coltrane noises. The fife piping is brought back only to lead to a massive thunder break from the drums.

Again, a nice melody, like a child skipping through the rubble of a war-torn city, finishes the set.

Absolutely wonderful. I have tried to describe it but, in this situation, writing about music is exactly like dancing about architecture.

Rev Orange Peel