trioVD - Fill It Up With Ghosts

(Babel)

The Leeds-based trio take their name from having saved a laptop recording of their very first gig as ‘trioVD’ (the initials standing for Valentine’s Day rather than the more dodgy alternative that might have sprung immediately to mind). The connection ends there, though. While the music has its gentler dimensions, Chris Sharkey (guitar and bass), Christophe de Bézenec (saxophone and electronics) and Chris Bussey (drums) are not going to furnish the chosen soundtrack for anyone’s romantic evening, unless they are of a fiercely experimental disposition.

The players all have connections with the helter-skelter world of free improvisation, but there is more structure and subtle touches discernible here amid the raucous mayhem. Wisely, given the often frenetic pace and in-your-face assault of the music, they have kept the album to a compact 41 minutes, after which you will very likely feel wrung out, but possibly equally exhilarated. Not for the faint hearted or conventionally inclined, but an invigorating blast on its own uncompromising terms.