Pokaz Trio are a recently emerged – and seemingly largely unknown – project borne out of the city of Odessa in Ukraine. Headed by Andrew Pokaz, composer and pianist in both jazz and classical contexts, they make their group debut with Kintsugi.
A gritty double-bass introduction by Vitaliy Fesenko leads us into the opening track, Slavonic Dance, which gradually crescendos and grows through playfully mysterious piano melodies and flourishes by Pokaz.
Other compositions on the album are given away by their suggestive titles. Easy is a rather slow ballad in which drummer Yakov Taruntsov acts as a metronome with steady rim clicks, and in the following track – Spark – he does the exact opposite, setting an energetic pace which Pokaz is quick to follow. In Sphere, Fesenko takes to bowing his double bass which, through the use of subtle electronic effects, creates an ambient backdrop to the composition.
On the whole, Kintsugi is a satisfying trio record. Each component of the band can be distinguished with great clarity, which makes for a series of evocative and cinematic compositions.
Discography
Slavonic Dance; Kintsugi; Elephant; Easy; Spark; Sphere; Kintsugi (piano version) (53.04)
Pokaz (p); Vitaliy Fesenko (b); Yakov Taruntsov (d). Muzichi Studio, Kyiv, Ukraine, 2017.
Losen Records LOS 224
