Brennan / Doran / Heral

Named after a mountaineering aide, Triangulation is the sound of two ex-pat Irishman and a Frenchman in the Swiss alps: precise, poetic, with occasional trail ways into disjunctive rabble rousing. Christy Doran’s electric and acoustic guitars are as attuned to fiery neo-prog attacks as gentle swells of ambient noise. John Wolf Brennan plays a variety of keyboards (melodica, accordion, pipe organ, etc.) but it is with his acoustic and prepared piano that he is clearest and most dynamic. Patrice Heral is the wild card, bringing a keen use of homemade percussion instruments along with a sampler full of offbeat sounds and voices. Brennan also takes on production duties with help from Leo Feigin, and the recording is so clear and balanced it provides even the minutest of elements with a vibrancy and life that springs from the speakers and into the room. The improvisation is neither minimal nor overwrought, giving equal weight to pure sound and melodic interplay. Perhaps, as in mountaineering, the Swiss inspire surefootedness in music as well.