Recording: American Standard Trio with Kayla Milmine and Mira Martin-Gray

Artist: American Standard Trio with Kayla Milmine and Mira Martin-Gray

Song: [excerpt from first piece, in two parts]

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Jazz and Otherwise Improvised Musics), July 9, 2019.

American Standard Trio with Kayla Milmine and Mira Martin-Gray - [excerpt from first piece, part 1]

American Standard Trio with Kayla Milmine and Mira Martin-Gray - [excerpt from first piece, part 2]

Short a member for the night, two-thirds of American Standard Trio (Dame Cook and Victor O) enlisted like-minded sonic explorers Mira Martin-Gray and Kayla Milmine to help populate their noise-as-jazz-as-noise soundworld. You know how some nights you can hear feral cats fighting with raccoons in a territorial battle over the green bins? Well, parts of this set sounded like that, only on a planet of robots. Not a Disney soundtrack then, but a lively and joyful ramble nonetheless.

Recording: American Standard Trio

Artist: American Standard Trio

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at Burdock Music Hall, November 11, 2018.

American Standard Trio - [excerpt 1]

American Standard Trio - [excerpt 2]

Excellent work here from AST, bigging up their sound to fit a more advanced PA than there was at the last time I saw 'em, and adding a touch of gravitas in creating some low-budget soundtrack-y electroacoustic jams. There was still a joi de vivre in their methodology, mind you, and watching the band in action (water-cooler jug percussion, elaborate pass-the-violin procedures and all) is like witnessing a gang of kids playing scrub on a baseball diamond — a lot of free movement that's still subject to higher principles of co-ordination.

Recording: American Standard Trio

Artist: American Standard Trio

Song: [excerpt]

Recorded at Wenona Lodge (Track Could Bend #40), July 3, 2018.

American Standard Trio - [excerpt]

Although this was the first official show for this unit, its constituent members have worked together in other projects — and were working together enough in finding this project's sonic space that their first tape (issued by Heretical Objects Cooperative) was out before this first gig. Self-consciously applying the tools of "noise" music to the structures of free jazz, the trio have found their own path into the cut'n'paste electroacoustic realm, with glubbering spoken word samples, abstract piano stabs and disembodied violin all finding their way into the mix. And though this audio sample might imply a fairly serious musical mentality, their live presentation (which included visuals reconstructed from videogame cutscenes) broadened that context into a more playful realm.

[Dame Cook (one-third of American Standard Trio) is performing at Nite Comfort, this Sunday (September 2nd) at Handlebar. Track Could Bend will be back downstairs at Wenona next Tuesday (September 4th), featuring sets from Saturn City, Sarah Tracy and Very Many.]