This live album by this unconventional trio was recorded at JaZzy Music Venue, on a quiet May night in 2023. Three exceptional young musicians from the Macedonian avantgarde jazz scene are playing on it. This is the first time the three of them have gathered on a collaborative album. However, Spirovski and Hadži Kocev appear on the two extremely successful albums by the Svetlost Odron Ritual Orchestra; Bukršliev and Hadži Kocev collaborated on the latest Filip Bukršliev Trio album, released for the renowned Skopje Jazz Festival Records; and Spirovski and Bukršliev played together on the last three albums by the post-rock/jazz band Fighting Windmills. JaZzy Music Venue, where this live performance was recorded, is a club in Skopje that is always open for musicians who prefer a free and open-ended format, without a previously set plan concerning the trajectory that their music will follow and surrender to. In a city like Skopje, such a venture is equal to commercial suicide. This album reflects JaZzy’s agenda most representatively. Bukršliev, Hadži Kocev and Spirovski embarked on an extremely difficult venture: to merge three instruments that have rarely been tied in a trio format before. However, the result of that blend sounds like they have been playing together for many years, not as a spontaneous musical collaboration, which was the case that night.

These types of concerts based on free improvisation do not necessarily have to be associated with generating noise, that only a small number of listeners can tolerate and experience properly: as a call for active listening, which brings an auditory award with a delayed effect. This album is the result of a free improv session which defeats the preconceived notion that you should equip yourself with earplugs for these types of gigs. However, it does not deny the need for active listening. On the contrary, without it, you can ignore this music altogether.

But ignoring is the last thing you should do, because you will lose a recording of a rare and beautiful evening, even for these three musicians who often perform in similar informal settings. The recorded performance of this unconventional trio format will surely lead to more future collaborations. A future in which this trio does not continue to perform and release albums is a future we want to leave in the domain of a parallel reality that has nothing to do with ours.

How does one begin to describe this strange music made with a guitar, a piano and a clarinet/saxophone? The associations it encourages are numerous. – Free improv jazz for lovers of ambient music or ambience for music vanguards who are not afraid to meditate through jazz idioms. Jon Hassell’s Fourth World filtered through the urban-rave twilight of Burial’s melancholy in his post-Untrue period. Miles Davis’ trumpet on Bitches Brew, suffocated with a cloth dipped in consumerist smog. The saddest, most repetitive wailings of Mats Gustafson’s horn on Fire!’s (Without Noticing) album, but “tamed” with formaldehyde euphoria. Godspeed You! Black Emperor playing lullaby covers of their own songs. A shelved album from the archives of Manfred Eicher, after he went on an exotic vacation and completely forgot that this album was left buried somewhere deep in the dusty drawers of ECM. And then when he came back a forgotten archive footage of a solo recording by Keith Jarrett was on the agenda… ^% *( ? >! _ &

Glitch.

A rupture!

White noise feedback...

A gentle fade-in...

... in a parallel reality in which Keith Jarrett was a student of the famous zen teacher Daisetz Suzuki. In the early 1970s the teacher presented Jarrett with two possibilities for the further course of his music career: “All your life you will play with your two hands and you will think that you are missing at least one more to be able to genuinely express yourself. This is the reason why you’ll emit unarticulated grunts and shrieks at your concerts: you will be tormented by the creative pain of your yet-non-existent third phantom hand. Years later, in 2018 you will experience two strokes, after which your left hand will become partially paralyzed and dysfunctional. You will be forced to play only with your right hand. From that moment on, your right hand WILL BE your third hand! Do you want to have two functional hands all your life, or to experience two strokes and conjure your third phantom hand?” Jarrett chose two consecutive strokes.

This album is a possible soundtrack of those two strokes.

After listening to this album, perhaps some of these comparisons will associate you with the music of this trio, but more or less, they are arbitrary associations which start from the initial impression that music always lacks something. And no, in this case it’s not the rhythm section. To live in a city (particularly Skopje) means to have all of life’s necessities readily available to you, but very little of those cute small things that make life meaningful. If you pile on top of that the urban chaos, relentless megalomania, shopping malls without borders, you will get a perfect combination for urban melancholy. The music recorded on this album is an expression of three exquisite Macedonian musicians forced to live and be creative in Skopje’s horror. Life here implies solitude in a city full of people. There is no downtown scene here like in New York, where you can always find time and space to exhale. Here reality relentlessly pushes down on you. This unbearable pressure is sonically represented on the Strog Post album; documented here is its by-product: sorrow.

This is especially noticeable in the first set “Transmarginal”. On it you can hear droning guitar passages by Burkršliev, who rarely dares to find time, space or need for a solo. And when a lonely solo does emerge above the surface of the gray silence of the drone, it sounds deliberately undone, because every resolution opens up space for hope; and hope shouldn’t be sought after here. The atmosphere acts as a gloomy spectre that disseminates fatigue which can’t find a place/time for rest. On top of that, Spirovski’s horns and Hadži Kocev’s piano constantly compete who will play darker tones and notes. The piano sometimes tries to comfort the saxophone (or vice versa), but in vain. The only tranquility that can be heard here is the “peace of sorrow” which pours through their sound pallets like lava on the slopes of Vesuvius. Therefore, the atmosphere on the 43-minute “Transmarginal” is set in such a way that it represents Jarrett’s unarticulated grunts and shrieks from the pain caused by his third, not-yet-emerged phantom arm.

However, this is not a music of total hopelessness and it shouldn’t be listened that way. In the “Beverly Hills” set one can take a peek at the light on the horizon of darkness. There is no guitar drone here (Bukršliev gives himself room for a few inspiring solo adventures), Spirovski’s tones are more optimistic, and Hadži Kocev’s piano, which mainly assumes the role of keeping time, opens up the possibility for some hope. Therefore, this is the theme that represents Jarrett’s acquisition of feeling in his third phantom arm.

Of course, in this music there are a multitude of other opportunities for finding peace in the discontent that pushes down on you. You can listen to it while walking your dog on a late Monday night, in an obscure Skopje neighborhood, when there are only hurried loners, staring at their smartphones, self-satisfied in the illusion that they will soon reach their final destination. But there is no such thing as a final destination. And soon after you pass them by, your dog will sniff some rusty pole, piss on it and then you will realize that eventually everything will be okay. With him beside you, it surely will be. As will also be with Jarrett. As will also be with the future of this trio.

Essential listening:
Svetlost Odron Ritual Orchestra (2019): pmgjazz.bandcamp.com/album/odron-ritual-orchestra
Svetlost Odron Ritual Orchestra (2021): sjfrecords.bandcamp.com/album/a-wave-returns-to-the-ocean
Filip Bukrshliev Trio (2023) All the Sad Words in the Beggar’s Dictionary: sjfrecords.bandcamp.com/album/all-the-sad-words-in-the-beggar-s-dictionary
Strog Post (2024): aksioma.bandcamp.com/album/strog-post
Fighting Windmills: fightingwindmillsmk.bandcamp.com
Taxi Consilium (2022) Spiritual Car Wash: pmgjazz.bandcamp.com/album/spiritual-car-wash
Svetlost (2020) Six Years: pmgjazz.bandcamp.com/album/six-years