Chris Donnelly (piano), Dan Fortin (bass) and Ernesto Cervini (drums, clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, alto sax and percussion) are the men of Myriad3. On their two opening tracks, Pluie Lyonnaise followed by Tamboa, a logical pairing they purvey a driving, almost rockist sensibility. Lively drums, piano making its presence felt loud and definite, the exuberance of youth at large from a small base. You might as well include track three Ward Lock, which by its close you realise is knit into that same tight arm-lock of in-your-face sonorities.
A kind of astringent tenderness steals in occasionally, as in the autumnal shades of Diamond. In this instance, the trio take their foot off the throttle, opting for a jaunt in a leafy mid-tempo glade. Donnelly's liquid piano rivulets play over a few left-hand chords, he is a visionary in what he sees before he puts his hands on keys. Meme Art is another such delicacy as is the final track Total, small churches of restrained ensembling.
Piano-Rag-Music, on the other hand, is like a thinking man's oom-pah-pah, a demented atonal circus, authored as it happens by one Igor Stravinsky.They return to a certain sylvan prettiness on the appealing Fortress. What may well be the bass clarinet glimmers in for the briefest of appearances, barely in and then gone. On DNA, we are back to Stravinsky-inspired painterly swirls and dots which, to put it politely, may challenge the listener. Ahem. Couche Tard challenges too, but it's more atmospheric, spinning a spider's web of sound, rattling and fretting at the windows of the thing.
Take them or leave them, Myriad3 are coming at us from the cutting edge of contemporary jazz and don't need our say-so.
