Things to Sounds is a Swiss, Zürich-based trio of young musicians focusing on free-improvisation, instant composing and fleeting soundscapes. The trio features alto sax player Tobias Meier, who also plays in a duo and trio with Danish percussionist Christian Windfeld, pianist and synthesizer player Yves Theiler, known for his collaborations with fellow Swiss sax player Omri Ziegele, and drummer David Meier, who plays in Trio Riot with Danish sax player Mette Rasmussen. Things to Sounds third album since 2010 is simply titled «3» and captures the trio live set at the Limmitationes Festival in Austria on May 2016.
«3» is an urgent 42-minutes sonic experience focused on the art of the moment, marked by an intense tension, fast shifts and uncompromising sonic collisions. The first minutes suggest patient searches for the right, immediate common ground and mood. Theiler uses his piano strings and wooden body to explore resonating percussive sounds, David Meier adds sparse, rolling percussive touches and Tobias Meier charges this contemplative interplay with brief, searching cries. After this brief introduction Things to Sounds rush into a muscular and dense mode that refuses to surrender to any pattern, rhythmic or structural one. Then, again, the trio explores an abstract, experimental soundscape, colored by the inventive percussive work of David Meier, still, without losing the tension.
From then on the trio swings back and forth between atmospheric, weird sounding meditative rituals and fast and fiery eruptions, stressing the fresh, extensive vocabulary of these resourceful improvisers. This intense journey concludes when all three musicians move fast together as a tight, three-headed organism. Things to Sounds impressive interplay keeps sketching nuanced textures that incorporate organically phrases that reference the South-African free jazz of the sixties and seventies, the Afro-American energetic brand of modern, free jazz and the European school of free improvisation.
Eyal Hareuveni
Tobias Meier (as), Yves Theiler (p, synth), David Meier (dr)
