THE HAFLER TRIO — An Utterance of the Supreme Ventriloquist

This Hafler Trio album was originally released in 1985 on vinyl. The beginning is the loudest, densest, and fastest, with an overall tranquility and lightening as the piece progresses. The piece is solemn, in a religious sort of way. It adds another dimension. On all three albums, Andrew McKenzie (the presiding genius and essentially the only member of the Hafler Trio) extracts what may be constued as an essence from those unique voices and molds them into his own signature smoke-and-mirror conceptual program. Vocal twists. Sound signatures fade and cross fade. The two pieces here are lovely sidelong excursions along the edge of the drone universe, recorded in Iceland, and connecting pathways between organic/acoustic cloud generators and tunnels of pure static electricity. Behind the gauzy, dura-translucent cover art and the dense, thoughtful phraseology lies the core of something strangely hollow, something quite chilling and fearless.