Loom & Thread - Island Grammar (2022)

Loom & Thread appear to present a take on this most classical of springboards of improvised music: the piano trio. Indeed, Daniel Klein on drums and Tobias Fröhlich on double bass forge that highly engaging, interlocking framework, set in complex juxtaposition to what emanates from the corner of Tom Schneider on keys. This would be a superbly satisfying triangle of planar relational wonder on its own. Imaginative re-adaptation of unexpected shifts, re-grouped into coherent streams of musical thought. Superb clarity despite the pressurised density of form, the emergence of intricate order from spontaneous play.

And yet this would be an utterly incomplete description. Because a dozen directions and dimensions and interdependent layers open like trap doors all around, shattering any first impression of a familiar context within just a few seconds of listening. What appears to be piano improvisation in the post-bop tradition soon exhibits abrupt disruptions, impossible shifts, improbable repetitions, movements in frequency and dynamics beyond the physical capabilities of a fixed-pitch instrument deemed so familiar.
How so? Tom Schneider samples his own playing and continuously feeds it back into the ongoing collective stream of the trio. Assigning starting points to the sampled phrases, these are then treated as independent musical events just like the individual tones they contain: a second order of access is created. Signifier and signified in the hands of the same musician, thus driving a two-pronged plane of immanence.

This meta-improvisation is thrown at the other two players who now find themselves embroiled in some kind of three dimensional chess game: fending off simulacra and responding to both, idiosyncratic primary phrases of tones and a vibrant multitude of sampled variants. Reflexivity: the piano/sampler continuum with its multi-layered access points to improvisational mapping is then attacking and soothing and further teasing the appropriately angular rhythm section. A wondrous dissolution of the divide between experiencing now and accessing memory.