Trinine was recorded in New York prior to their last album Strobosphere. It features all three original members ‐ Alister Parker, John Halverson and Bent McLachlan.
All three band members were also in The Gordons, who recently won the Independent Music NZ Classic Album award. John and Brent were also in Skeptics, who are featured in a recent documentary Sheen of Gold. Flying Nun is reissuing both the albums, Amalgam and III.
Review:
After returning from a 13-year hiatus with Strobosphere in 2012, New
Zealand's Bailterspace quickly followed it up with Trinine, their second
offering for Fire Records. Recorded by the original lineup of guitarist Alister
Parker, drummer Brent McLachlan, and bassist John Halvorsen, this set directly
reflects the trio's lineage, it also ups the ante of guitar rock in the 21st
century. Though Strobosphere was muscular, it lacked some of the
group's trademark, textured dynamics. Not so here. Trinine looks back while
taking on the present concretely. It is a moodier, more experimental, and more
sinister affair overall. While Bailterspace's own frenetic, layered tonalities
are at work in the “sound” of these compositions, they are underscored by a
subtle melodicism, spaciousness, and rhythmic invention that looks back
simultaneously to Tago Mago-era Can and early Sonic Youth à la EVOL. The
opening title track with its lyric cadence and phrasing, balanced by
multi-tracked, low-tuned guitars and wide-open, throbbing basslines, is a case
in point. “Tri5,” with its drum and guitar attack mixed far above the barely
discernible vocals, is more straight-ahead, but Parker's wall of noise is
interrupted mid-cut by a single-string vamp, pushed by McLachlan's skittering
beat and Halvorsen's solid drone bassline; the storm erupts even more
cataclysmically later on, with the vocal being the only thread holding it all
together. Other standouts include “In the World,” which commences
hypnotically along a single undistorted guitar riff that is all but dominated by
a two-note bassline and constant snare and tom-tom pulse. Just under three
minutes in, it leaves that all behind and enters a maelstrom of counter melody
and increasing distortion until it explodes. “Open” creates a taut monotony
that leaves the listener desiring a meltdown that never quite emerges. Trinine
only falters in the last quarter, where it engages in outright experimentation
to mixed result. Though “Silver” maintains a songlike structure even as it
enters the frenzied domain of its predecessors, “Gamma Tram,” “Films of
You,” and the demo-esque closer “Tanzenloop” all feel unfinished. Despite
these shortcomings, Trinine is a winner: the trio's willingness to
simultaneously reflect its influences so openly, yet take chances with its own
tropes and established sound, makes for deeply satisfying – and sometimes
headscratching – listening.
All Music Guide – Thom Jurek