Pollen Trio – 230509

I’ve elected to not follow too closely the “Best Of” lists that pop up at this time of year. I love reading them, but I can’t bring myself to write one of my own, for fear of offending the records that I’d leave off it.

So instead I thought I’d like to point to the album I’ve listened to the most (despite the fact it was released in the 12 months prior), hands down my favorite, which represented a true “find” for me. It also made me think about how music consumption has changed, and how exceedingly difficult it is to explain to someone under the age of twenty what it used to be like to buy music.

You operated in a total information vacuum. If you were young, you never had enough money to spend on records (and I think that’s true of any age group, but I digress), and if you wanted to know what they sounded like you had to wait until they were played on the radio, or go out and buy them. If the local record shop didn’t have a copy, you had to ask them to order it for you or travel to somewhere that had copies.

Once you found somewhere that did have things you wanted to buy, you had to make the choice based on the limited information the cover art gave you, rely on word of mouth (or the counter guy’s recommendation) or if you were very, very lucky they may have a listening station that they’d let you use.

You could literally spend all day in the shop if they’d let you. Hours poring over purchases. Trying to avoid the inevitable buyer’s regret – “what if the other one was better?” because you may have never found out. Information was gleaned from magazines printed once a month, or elder siblings that had read more of these magazines than you.

In this environment, you would rarely just lash out and buy something on a whim. Every purchase would be made in on a descending order of priority that shifted constantly. If you ever did just throw caution to the wind and pick something up on impulse, unheard, sight unseen, and it turned out to be something you loved – well. It’d be something of a genuine find.

Why do I mention this? Because it’s gone, that time, and also because I did just that with this record, buying it unheard on a whim. I realized HOW RARELY I DO THAT, how rarely I acquire music I’ve not had any exposure to prior to seeing it in a shop for the first time. How much I rely on social networks and other methods to BRING IT TO ME, rather than going out and looking.

Shazam will direct you to a song online before the first chorus has finished. You can have Miles Davis’s ENTIRE back catalogue within hours, if your connection is fast enough, where it may have taken years to complete the same feat for an obsessive fan in an earlier age. This despite the fact that the pursuit itself was the reward, and often not the goal itself…

So coming across a record without having it previewed, hyped and oversold; multiple streaming previews, Youtube links, emails to your inbox, ads on Facebook; finding a genuine, unheard gem is a rare occurrence. Especially one that ticks as many boxes as “230509” by The Pollen Trio does.

Raw, spontaneous, manipulated recording, obviously mixed with care? Check.

Articulate, music school trained improvised jazz flourishes? Check.

Filtered through a brash, youthful punk DIY approach, with traditional approach slamming up against experimentation? Check.

‘PaleBurst’ kicks off proceedings with a bang – best to get the Necks comparison out of the way now. It’s a three piece playing improvised pieces with the same instruments, so the comparison is valid, if not a little obvious. There’s certainly an obvious similarity, but the approach is more youthful and aggressive. The staccato bass and cymbal work peek out from behind the frenetic piano work, and clever mixing manipulations provide colour during a hypnotic opener.

‘Morning Of’ ambles in announced by some minimalist percussion and string clatter. Some lovely earthy scraping and between-song instrument rambling morphs into a horror/sci-fi ambience, before fading into the chiming ‘Syndrome’. The post-production here on the piano is noticeable and original, and when merged with what sounds like the authentic take of the other instruments it becomes a wide and clever soundscape.

‘Clamp’ is an interesting textural experiment with unconventional sound that fades cleanly into ‘File In’.

‘File In’ continues the textural theme, but has been mixed in such a way that it blends into the next piece with different tones coming from all angles. There are a lot of ideas at play here, and all of them worth paying attention to separately.

‘Plunge Raid’ starts off as an Abrahams inspired patter, devolving into a static frenzy of audio swirling, truly mind bending stuff, and as a passage out of the record is pretty brash. It slams the door shut abruptly, but with a feeling that that door may actually lead to another record with the massive potential that the previous tracks have hinted at.

“230509” hints at a unit that could, given time, generate a record that bridges jazz, electronic experimentation and improvisation in a way that confounds everyone. A previous release, “Amalgama”, also demonstrates the progression the band has taken, as does their collaboration with Seaworthy which points to further ability to morph their sound.

The CD is available from hellosQuare records with an automatic Bandcamp download on purchase, and is well worth the small outlay they are charging for it. Anyone who’s had an interest in The Necks, or in experimental jazz would be strongly advised to acquire “230509”.

I mentioned in an earlier interview with Shoeb Ahmed that we’re also tracking down the guys from Pollen to discuss the release, and should have that up for you soon.

- Review by Alex Gibson for Fluid Radio

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