Trii Group: Interest in Music LP

Quietly concentrated downbeat pop, illbience, dematerialised drums and sliding whimpers from Max Stocklosa’s TRJJ and TRIIGroup, rejoining Stroom for his 3rd LP and follow-up to ’12 Dances’

Venturing forth in his discreet, unobtrusive style of ambient-pop, Stocklosa is flanked by the wider TRIIGroup to express his ‘Interest In Music’ over 14 hazy and endearingly open-ended works that dovetail beautifully with what we’ve come to expect of Belgium’s indomitable Stroom label. The Cologne-based singer-songwriter-artist operates at an alluring level of liminality throughout the album, with drums landing more as ghostly impressions rather than punctuation, underlining the plasmic sensuality and lowlit but lofty spaces of his sound and gently buoying the vocals in smoky dimensions.

If you’re after highlights, we’d advise checking for the lilting waltz of his lead single ‘G Lok G Lok’ and listening up for the loner hymn of ‘Friend’, and the squashed steel drum shimmer of ‘3rd Generation East German (Teen Rejection)’ while the deliquescnt nose drip brain tickle of ‘Triple Train’ sounds a bit like Cindy Lee meets Felix Kubin. Always winners.