Tom Erbe/ Chris Mann / Larry Polansky / Douglas Repetto / Christian Wolff

Trio recordings made by five people? A mystery rivalling the Thompson Twins (actually a three-person band) or the Ben Folds Five (a real trio). Less confusing when it’s revealed there are actually two trios at work here; the duo of Larry Polanksy on guitar and Douglas Repetto on electronics was joined first by Chris Mann on vocalisation, then by Christian Wolff on a variety of keyboards and percussion. Many hours of improvisation were recorded by Repetto and (here the fifth man is revealed) sent to Tom Erbe to edit, shape and sculpt into six tracks of post-production art. The trampled evidence is cohesive yet admirably retains a surprising amount of spontaneity. Mann’s Schwitters-like Dadaist texts haunt the background, swept around by the mutated sounds of bent guitars and time-lag piano. Machine noises are netted overtop and through, lending constant awareness of technology’s plastic fingerprints all over the process. Each track possesses an identity all its own, different tempos, balances, densities, but the album as a whole has a consistency of vision likely not present at the music original moment of creation.