Like the blooming flowers on the cover, the music explores the natural and the synthetic, creation and reinterpretation.
Pyroclastic Records
Craig Taborn – keyboards; Marcus Gilmore – drums and percussion; Nels Cline – 6-string & 12-string guitars, lap steel guitar, bass on tracks 4 & 10
When producer David Breskin puts musicians together, sparks usually fly. Nearly four decades after his groundbreaking Strange Meeting project united Bill Frisell, Melvin Gibbs, and Ronald Shannon Jackson as Power Tools, Breskin has orchestrated another alchemical meeting: keyboardist Craig Taborn, guitarist Nels Cline, and drummer Marcus Gilmore converging as Trio of Bloom for their first-ever collaboration.
The album opens with Ronald Shannon Jackson’s ‘Nightwhistlers,’ connecting this project to Breskin’s earlier Power Tools collaboration. Gilmore’s percussion leads with beautiful rhythmic authority, while Cline’s guitar whines and strums through distorted elastic lines. The repeated crackling electronic pulse sounds like an otherworldly factory warning signal that’s hypnotic and even a little unsettling. It’s an immediate declaration that this trio blends the rhythmic, melodic, and electronic into something completely their own.
The way they handle covers shows their approach: not reverence, but transformation. Their version of Wayne Shorter and Milton Nascimento’s ‘Diana’ exemplifies this approach, with Taborn’s crystalline celeste, Cline’s ephemeral loops, and Gilmore tuning his toms like timpani for each chord change. As Gilmore noted about the original’s perfection: “You can’t try to make it better… So we just had to make it different.” Similarly, their take on Terje Rypdal’s ‘Bend It’ keeps the original’s ticking drums and tranquilizing bass line, but wraps it in deeper reverb and resonance, trading ECM’s vast open spaces for something more shadowy and mysterious.
The album’s quieter moments reveal the trio’s more introspective side. Gilmore’s ‘Breath ’begins with quietly swirling electronics that gradually weave around Taborn’s prayerful piano, until bursts of energy break through like a distant lightning storm. Taborn’s ‘Unreal Light’ is more ethereal, with electronics that ring trancelike and keyboard notes that warble and collide with Cline’s short, lovely phrases.
When the trio locks into groove territory, the results are both accessible and unpredictable. Cline’s ‘Queen King’ opens with martial-sounding drums and a persistent bass line before Taborn drops in short, off-kilter phrases. The effect is haunting, with multiple rhythmic layers spinning at once. Cline’s guitar is pure Cline—impossible to pin down—moving from jagged rock riffs to tones that twist around Taborn’s keyboards, which shift between eerie calliope-like textures and bursts of soul-organ grit. His ‘Forge’ builds intensity like a distant tsunami, while Taborn’s ‘Why Canada’ catapults to the opposite end with corrosive, abstract funk—jagged piano lines suggesting an electrical machine on the verge of breakdown.
‘Bloomers,’ the album’s ten-minute centerpiece, dives into free improvisation with guitar overtones, low keyboard rumbles, and light percussion, like a machine slowly powering up. Scrapes, gongs, and electronic pings push the music toward the atmosphere of an eerie 1950s sci-fi flick, while Cline’s guitar shifts from mechanical sputters to distorted dissonance. Through it all, Gilmore stays steady, dropping precise, stately drum patterns that anchor the chaos.
Cline’s three-part ‘Eye Shadow Eye’ moves from tender balladry through bluesy terrain to an anthemic finale, while ‘Gone Bust’ provides a final shock of bristling energy.
What makes Trio of Bloom successful isn’t just individual virtuosity, but their shared commitment to what Taborn describes as “the broadest range of possible influences.” Like the blooming flowers on the cover, the music explores the natural and the synthetic, creation and reinterpretation. The result defies easy categorization while staying cohesive—adventurous music that rewards close listening and keeps unfolding with every play.
