Trio VD – Maze
Listening to this album concocted in a basement in Leeds over the past two years is a heady trip which I'm going to take you on track by track so as not to get lost in the Maze:
With opener Brick my first thoughts are: Wow, What? With drums akin to Battles in parts, scratchy sax sounds like those heard from Acoustic Ladyland and Garbled vocals Shpongle might produce it is a struggle to pinpoint Trio VD. I then think I can hear a military chant "left, left, left right left", and it is at this point before you are introduced to the first bout of metal guitar chugging the album has to offer that I realise it. I'm lost.
Interlocking is like a combo of Rolo Tomassi and the left field jazz of polar bear. Now I might be slipping into the realms of the unreal because it feels like a hysterical clown is driving me along in his psychedelic car. Next up is ups and it's no more comforting as there is a baby crying. I wonder what these maniacs are doing to it to make it cry. I suppose it could be the music, as it is pretty impossible to follow with it all being cut up into shreds now much like how four tet constructed his early work.
With morse the crazy visions this music conjures up continue as if somebody has filled a jam jar too tight and all this jam is about to burst out. Do I hear French amongst all this heavy riffage ahead of the detuned remix section that follows? I conclude it is French, or it might as well be as I cannot make out a single word before being flung head first into some Tech-metal riffage. Later it gives way to a menacing ambience whereupon the transmission is interrupted with more metal riffing.
Phew! Ducks comes as a relief with a nice sax solo. This is followed by the dirty synth groove of Dbst. As drones soar around the headphones and the sax takes its turn riffing I figure this trioVD's take on DubStep. Then as a new oceansize-like prog-rocking riff goes back and forth with the synth/sax riff I am forced to reconsider. Riff after riff after riff proves me undeniably wrong. It is more like a very experimental prog rock song. The worry creeps back in as Harm begins by forces me to ask have you got something stuck in your throat there? It is notable as the only track with something that resembles some lyrical singing although it is very Shpongle-esque, and the shouts appear to be something about an "ice-cream rota"? Some sounds you might expect to hear from DJ kilmore of incubus fame also feature.
Next a clicking and ticking is building up the sounds of some high tech imminent alien invasion. But no - it cuts out to some people talking! Now hang on as again the build up continues with more intensity. We can be sure now it is going to go into something. No! Wrong again. Ahh the track is called interrupting.
Bee is just a bit of random soloing from sax accompanied by guitar and in places vocals. I'm exhausted and yet there is more. The last song starts with guitar and sax tinkering. Then you are bludgeoned by heavy metal riffage before falling into a chasm of detuned drones. Here in Pet Shop Boys I am well and truly lost in this highly confusing, shape shifting maze of an album, plunged into its depths eclipsed from reality. Crawling out of this crater is palm muted guitar then a drum beat rises from this to clamber out of the deepest of holes. Now we are tunnelling through the dark soil, with a cool low bass riff leading the way, and with sunlight emerging I can smell the end. However screeching reveals the surface to be scarred. And the world turned into trioVD's nightmare world of soundscapes, industrial drilling and overpowering riffs.
This is just about as far from easy listening as you could ever get. It is easy to get lost with constant changes and ambient passages and impressive but annoying glitchy instrumental playing, but I guess that is trioVD's point - this is a Maze.