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It has taken a good long while for K Leimer, Marc Barreca and Steve Peters to reunite. Nearly 40 years after their last performance (and the 2020 release of those sessions on Layered Contingencies) Three Point Circle has set out again, this time with Proximity Effects (74'15"). Capturing a rawness and directness distinct from their solo efforts, the trio reconvenes under a familiar framework of extended improvisations. Unfurling in shimmering slow motion, their journey never ceases to entrance. The five tracks, each of their own particular power and mood, conjure a sensual stillness. The resulting album comes across as a statement of purpose. Proximity Effects reads well from a distance, but the closer we listen the more layers of meaning are revealed. Embracing sonic diversity in shapely harmonies and crafty ambience, a textural analysis finds ornamentation and richness gradually accumulating. Amidst numbed melodies that seem to struggle for air the narrative sometimes idles, but the transfixing mood remains fully intact. As slivery fluttering sounds resound above a mumbled flow of drones, notes surge forth from the subconscious depths. Cohering in the imagination, rather than the ear of the listener, maybe it is the psyche itself that is the subject of these billowing, slow-building realizations. Leimer, Barreca and Peters are telling stories with sound. Communicating in a language without words it is the arrangement of tones of different weight, gravity and value, and their placement according to function and meaning which has produced such an expansive and elegantly crafted work. Less reliant on motion than on atmosphere we find this Ambient triplex still functioning in an uncharted higher dimension - providing us with a soft place in a hard world.
Chuck van Zyl/STAR'S END - 1 July 2021 |
