released December 12, 2023
Recorded by Jonas Gerigk at Saxstall, Pohrsdorf/Tharandt, 11-14 April, 2023.
Mixed and edited by Burkhard Beins
Cover design by Matt Brandi
Artwork by Sean O'Brien
Produced by Mark Wastell
℗ Confront Recordings 2023
www.confrontrecordings.com
"This trio’s format is of a classic piano trio but its sonic vision has nothing to do with the jazz legacy. Tuerlinckx, Gerigk and Beins are fearless and imaginative improvisers and sound artists who keep researching and expanding the sonic range of their respective instruments with inventive extended techniques. Inside the piano and with objects, with unique bowing and percussive techniques and with the transformation of percussive instruments into sound generators. The two, free improvised «Chimères» pieces, mixed and edited by Beins, suggest enigmatic and ephemeral listening experiences that draw the listener deeper and deeper into their alien, fascinating and sometimes even unsettling noisy sounds, hypnotic pulses and suggestive images, with captivating tension and inspired sonic imagination. You may want to listen to these again and again, immediately after the first listening, to explore its almost infinite sonic charms and secrets." (Eyal Hareuveni)
"What might appear to be a standard piano/bass/drums trio is anything but. The music on Au Crépuscule occupies a territory somewhere between post-1980 AMM and some of the more thoughtful free improv ensembles of this century, and it's a beauty.
The two tracks, each about 20 minutes long, unspool naturally and at their own leisure; not to say that the music is languid or sluggish, simply unhurried in a delightful way. Any comparisons to AMM begin with pianist Tuerlinckx, a marvelous player who has at least a few things in common with John Tilbury's approach, including a profound sense of submerged melody and overt color. In fact, I'm not sure if there's a moment of "simple" piano keyboard sound here; the instrument has either been prepared internally or manipulated (struck, stroked, etc.) inside and out. Beins in the Prévost role is also not too far-fetched although his own range of coloration, while including those bowed cymbals, is arguably wider than Prévost's in recent years and, as with Tuerlinckx, he has always possessed a subtle, underlying sense of melody or tonality that plays off wonderfully against the pianist. But the glue here, and the element that differentiates this session from anything AMM-like, is bassist Gerigk, who I've not encountered before. Consistently rich in tone and providing not rhythms but pulses, drones and throbs, his notes reach out and grasp those from the piano and percussion, creating a gravitational dynamic that holds matters together in complex and swirling patterns. The elements in play here are by no means unfamiliar but their deployment is spectacular, resulting in one of the finer, deeper improv sets to be heard in recent years." (Brian Olewnick, Squidco)