Vasco Trilla "Unmoved Mover" (Fundacja Sluchaj. 2021)

There is people who made the history of improvised music and who is well exposed in the temple of criticism or in the pantheon of the mind of music lovers, then there are musicians who gave their entire life to find out new paths in articulating a personal language, and then again there are creative guys who want only to risk and give new lymph to a ‘tradition’, that of the avant-garde, and that therefore are taken by many people as redundant, while in fact they’re essential as the other cats.

Read what Andrea Centazzo said about Vasco Trilla, the musician we want to explore in this post: “Being one of the first solo percussion improvisers in the ‘70s, I paid special attention to Vasco work. This fresh music is a blossoming of ideas and sounds. Vasco is a minimalist in percussion, each sound is accurately chosen and explored to an extreme end. A world of larger horizons and open skies where the percussion trigger the most inner intense feeling in the listener”.

Born in Barcellona, Vasco Trilla started playing drums at the age of 19. Initially into progressive rock and metal, he developed an interest for improvised music, but this is really cutting short and I want to give you more cues on Trilla’s work. After all, knowing about one artist life and tastes can help in enjoying better his own art. So, the first thing I want you to be aware is that Trilla studied art history and was passionate about Polish and Russian cinema and music.

So he studied at university the movies of Wojciech Jerzy Haas, Andrzej Waida, Andrzej Munch, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, and Krzysztof Kieslowski while he listened to the music of Lutoslawski and Penderecki. On the other hand he was into the experimental metal scene of that country, with bands like Decapitated and Kriegsmachine. It is quite common for the younger generation of experimental musicians to be able to skim through such different sources of inspiration, and it’s good because you can develop your own voice made of fragments of different previous identities without belonging to anyone of those.

Between the many collaborations of Trilla you can find the names of Andrea Centazzo, Jamaladeen Tacuma, Cecil Taylor, Peter Evans, Marshall Allen, Lotte Anker, Wilbert de Joode, Mette Rasmussen, Ilia Belorukov, Axel Dorner, and this is only a small part. His last solo album is titled “Unmoved Mover” and it is issued by the label Fundacja Sluchaj. The seven minutes title track opens with small cymbals and noise interruptions here and there, but the intent of the music is to create into the listener a space where he can be aware of everything that happens as an event, as you can listen through some of the old and recent AEOC records.

Gongs and drumsticks rubbed against the cymbals give substance to the atmosphere with bold but delicate statements. Then a huge amount of small bells appear, giving the music some solemnity and the sacred tone it deserves. An openly percussive texture so to give the listener the feeling of a path through sound is experimented in Hylomorphism. Ousia is dominated by a more preeminent cymbals sound, and natural echo effects, while Living Bodies is constructed on a dialogue between thicker and denser sounds, before an explosion of little bells.

Nous – how many of you care about gnosticism or Philip K. Dick novels? – is more dominated by dynamics of sound and silence, leaving you with this presence of a vast unexplored space in your mind, where different volumes and densities of textures are also present building a fascinating climax, and if Hylozoism can seem only a subtle pause made of other bells chiming, Celestial Spheres is like listening to thunders and the natural elements in a primeval brew, interspersed with the sound of the bells.

We can get this way to the end of Causeless Cause, almost seven minutes of summary of Trilla’s art as a scultpor of sound through bells, a set of chimes activated in different moments, as if each one of them is giving life to the following. And while this album is becoming one of my favourite releases of the year, discovering my gentle side and knowing something more about myself, I can only recommend you to give Vasco Trilla the chance to become one of your favourite young players.