With the album title Trio, the number of musicians involved in this endlessly fascinating percussion record is explicitly named – but it also describes the three-dimensional spatial quality of its sound ideas. The drum trio does more than provide a rhythmic framework; it takes listeners on short excursions and extended sonic journeys: meandering, clattering, probing, surging ahead, then drifting back into a wonderfully loose sway.
The music feels dense yet finely articulated. Effects such as reverb, along with the airy electronic textures the trio employs, never lead to overload. This is all the more striking given that Simon Popp and his collaborators Flurin Mück and Sebastian Wolfgruber are capable of turning virtually anything into rhythm – something that becomes especially clear in their remarkable live performances. Naturally, established elements of the percussion tradition are present: gongs and drums of various origins, singing bowls, cowbells. But sometimes all it takes to generate sound is a plastic bucket filled with water.
What makes the album particularly notable is that these sonic explorations, however spontaneous they may seem, never dissolve into a diffuse jam session. Instead, the tracks remain clearly contoured and idiosyncratic – and, almost incidentally, often give rise to melodies that linger in the memory.
