It’s rare that an album encapsulates the exact landscape that it’s attempting to represent. Triosk however, have confidently done so with their latest release, The Headlight Serenade.
I first listened to The Headlight Serenade while pottering around at home, doing idle tasks. I made some mental notes and drifted away to places where the music took me. When I read the press release, I realised that all the thoughts that had come to my mind, had been purposely created to evoke those exact kinds of images.
The album title and subsequent artwork is derived from “the transitory way that headlights pass across objects, creating split second moments and alternate spaces in time”, says drummer and percussionist Laurence Pike. He continues, “Light can bring many different things into focus, creating a microcosm of detail and perspective that you never knew existed”.
The Headlight Serenade is full of detail, precisely crafted and completely intentional. It’s almost like Triosk slowed down the world, and zoned into spaces that are mostly ignored in life, yet are full of substance. The spaces under the microscope are roadsides, bushes, lone streets, forests, still lakes, and nature in general. The time is night and Triosk balance the intersection of light and dark to precision. Shadows come alive, and dust and wind and dew and mist seem to hold tangible qualities in these captured moments. Unknown things scurry past, and random distractions keep you alert.
The sounds on this album are a development to Triosk’s previous releases, Moment Returns (2004), and the collaborative album with Jan Jelinek 1+3+1. Spending more time in the studio with The Headlight Serenade, Triosk have worked through ideas more fully, honing them to deliberate perfection, and even basing pieces on recordings of their own live improv performances.
The non-linear song structure that Triosk established in their previous works, surfaces again in songs like ‘Lost Broadcast’ and ‘One Twenty-Four’. Here we are guided by the band’s direction, unsure of what’s around the corner but content to be pulled along. Sitting in the middle of the album is the 11 minute epic ‘Lazyboat’. This track, like many others on the album, is layered with a heavy brooding ambience, where tinkering sounds dance around on top. Not simply for the length of this track, ‘Lazyboat’ is eerily engaging and a standout on the album. Counter-acting this length is the song ‘Lost Reprise’ which comes in at under one minute. Appearing as more of an interlude, ‘Lost Reprise’ has a feeling of wide open spaces and intersecting moments, which is essentially what the whole album is about, but here the sounds are placed together like a concise summary.
Elsewhere, the songs waver in length, and include more conclusive song structure which is new territory for the band. The opening track ‘Visions IV’, and the title track ‘Headlights’, take on a progressive approach and build layers of sounds until a peak is reached and the resulting fall can be explored to it’s reasonable end. The last track ‘Fear Survivor’ is a deviation, beginning with frenetic chaos, and even some words implying a soundcheck. The cacophony fades out to the calming of the lone piano, and it seems that order has been restored again.
In many ways, this album is a challenging listen. It’s abstract nature requires time, just like a good piece of art or literature. It is uncertain and anxious like a ghost in a small village in the mountains. It’s also moody like a surrealist painter with depression. And it’s dark like a nightmare that may never end. At the same time though, there’s an essence of uplifting open-endedness, depth and clarity to this release.
There’s also a strong visionary quality combined with aesthetic experimentation which is something that progresses music forward as an art form. The inventiveness that Triosk offer on this album, easily places them on the post-modern stage alongside contemporaries The Necks, Four Tet, The Cinematic Orchestra, and Tortoise. The Headlight Serenade is out on the Leaf Label which has also released albums by genre bending artists Caribou and Clue to Kalo. It would find a good home in a CD player on a cold, lonely night, and would certainly be appreciated by anyone with a discerning ear for sparse, intricate and hauntingly beautiful new music.
