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Trevor Dunn's Trio ConvulsantSister Phantom Owl Fish Ipecac/Shock In a word: unlistenable. Nah go on, I bloody dare you. You, with your smug eclecticism who's so much better equipped to hack this scattershot assemblage of counterpoint, power chords and atonal melodies, changing the subject every twenty seconds just to show off how broad your tastes are. You, shirking the challenge of creating a complete composition with anything resembling structure or resolution. You, invoking jazz to justify self-indulgence. Yes, even you Trevor Dunn ("Yes, the Trevor Dunn of Fantomas and Mr. Bungle" shills the sticker on the cover. And where's the complementary warning sticker announcing 'May contain none of the slick transcendance of Fantomas and Mr. Bungle') can't get much joy out of 'Sister Phantom Owl Fish'. It's not that it's bereft of ideas, it's just that the good ones are jumbled in with the bad ones. Patches of Liver Colored Dew and Specter Of Serling appear to be approaching some sort of direction only to stagger into arbitrary improvisation where Trio Convulsant play with no ear to each other's actions whatsoever, stumbling about like drunken party guests crashing into the furniture. I'm Sick is a classic example of what makes this album so unwelcome: a straightforward little latin Jazz guitar lick played too fast and too repetatively until it's out of sync with bass and drums and merely aggravating. This is not challenging music; it's failing music. "I have no ties & nowhere to go," asserts Trevor Dunn in the promo notes, "and the music I write is a result of that". Unfortunately this is only too evident in the results.  |
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