Record Review: SvarcTrio - Touch

I've not reviewed anything in a while, but this looks pretty special!

Touch by Svarc Trio

http://svarctrio.bandcamp.com/album/touch

Before you even begin to listen to this record, the artwork is stunning.

The second thing that hits you is astounding musicianship. A lovely dark master lets this work wash over you, and the overall product is incredibly listenable.

Jazz is a genre that I don't pretend to have a comprehensive knowledge of, which probably makes my enjoyment of this record more profound, as the Jazz stereotype is music for musicians. I'm ignorant of all that stuff, and I love it all the same. I think this falls into the spectrum of Jazz, although the sound reminds me heavily of early prog, with it's space echoey guitars and fat drums.

The more Nothing Serious develops the more into it I get. It feels like listening to one of those great old early 70's prog records that last forever but really don't drag. A ten minute jam can easily turn into musical masturbation, but this doesn't. Not a second is wasted here, it's a tantric build up. A slow, tantric mind-fuck. I love it.

I should add I'm listening as I type.

Imprints part one, kinda spooky. I love the echo, all reminds me very much of John Martyn, whose Solid Air album is a firm favourite of mine.

Holy Crap! Chainsaw Snore is nearly 20 minutes long! I'm expecting good things here. Oh, wow. I guess that if you drop acid to this record this is where the freak-out comes. It's like a funky jazz-moose stampeding through a china-shop. Oh shit, a lorry's now reversing through the china shop and space time is falling apart. I'm going to stop with the analogy, it's not helping. I'll leave the ending as a surprise.

2 troubled magnets enjoys more spacially-aware writing, taking time to build and pull the separate parts into one entity. I have complete admiration of how these musicians can operate so individually yet so as a whole. All the instruments feel detached, but this must rely one a hyperawareness of what the band are doing as a whole.

Imprints part two is now tying the whole album together in a kind of epic finale. Seriously beautiful stuff here, the tracks really work as a whole, not just a bunch of jams glued together.

I was expecting this record to be good, but I'm a convert. This is wicked. In today's music world, a record with so much space, so much delicacy and intensity is very hard to find. Nice one SvarcTrio.

Sam x