Treppenwitz - Sister in Kith (2021) [Official Digital Download]

×

Treppenwitz - Sister in Kith (2021) [Official Digital Download]

Close

Sister in kith is the third album from Treppenwitz, the latest chapter in an ongoing story. The band set up with microphones in a living room; the engineer pressed record and they played. There was no separation between the instruments, and the audio has almost no post-production treatment. The results are startlingly immediate. sister in kith is simply the raw sound of these musicians, on that day, in that room, and the stunning audio quality seems to almost ignore that fact.

This organic ethos is equally present in the music. sister in kith demonstrates Treppenwitz's commitment to improvisation – which is to say, their commitment to using the present moment, the here and now, as the medium by which they dive into the unknown. Songforms are used a point of departure for explorations of sonic texture, harmonic sonority, rhythmic interplay and spontaneous interaction; sounds are configured and reconfigured in a deep dialogue of piano, bass and drums.

Influences come from far and wide. sockeyed / loose laces is a meditation in Bartokian rhapsodising; dream of a common language is a child of Paul Motian's rubato ballads; sound logic / sound magic is a roguish nod to Anthony Braxton; brimful is surreal Ornette swing. The final track, a mackerel's tale, featuring special guest Nel Begley, spins a narrative about a woman who metamorphoses into a sea creature. The end result is an album which is willing to borrow from anything and everything it can to achieve its aims.

This piano trio embraces multiple aspects of the improvised music tradition, resulting in music which is equal parts explorative, lyrical and explosively wild. In every performance, the shapes and contours of the music develop organically; different every time, always seeking. The sound is steeped in the free jazz of the 1960's, but the music can and does go anywhere: the blues, high modernism, celestial spiritual vamps and European folklore are all part of the family.