TROOT

TROOT- Tim Root, composer and keyboard/pianist, along with

Steve Ball: Acoustic Guitar; Amy Denio: Saxophone and Accordion; Alex Anthony Faide: Guitar; Beth Fleenor: Clarinets and Voice; Nora Germain: Violin; Bill Horist: Guitar and Prepared Guitar; Alessandro Inolti: Drums; Marco Machera: Bass; Julie Slick: Bass

These musicians are involved with a variety of other bands and musical outfits.

I'd fully intended to review another album entirely

And then I happened across this one. Intrigued, I started listening and was immediately hooked.

I couldn't shake the movie in my head

No dialogue- in fact no vocals until increasingly frenzied female utterances in ?French? begin lamenting and raging midway through the film'er, album.

Yet I could 'see' misty streets, characters in fedoras, headscarves, and trench-coats. It was clearly a tragic love story filled with passion, pathos, and drama.

The heart of the experience was the piano

The stage was set with bold discord at times, or sly simmering arpeggios, descending and ascending like quicksilver. Instrumentation would join and suddenly full band splendor would threaten to break out, only to be side-tracked by a distant accordion, or wailing saxophone.

And was that a baritone sax leading the way for awhile?

Themes appeared, were slightly subverted, then restated

Sometimes there was a near-playful/whimsical air with comical percussion noises and whistling synthesizers.

And, perhaps too rarely, that wistful, wailing violin

Especially in 'Venus of the Sky', and 'Hollow By Footsteps', violin passages shone- heck, all passages, all instrumentation shone. Maybe of necessity the rhythm section was well set back.

Nothing bristled forth, all was blended and part of the whole.

Except for that disturbing, roiling, raging female voice

In 'Joey' it started ritualistically, repetitiously- and became full-blown crazed. If this were a movie, someone was not having it- the jilted lover? Can't tell.

So'what pictures and images did Tim Root have in his head?

Regardless, this is a full-on joy to experience, a finely played, finely captured cinematic musical masterpiece.

Rating: 5 out of 5 berets/fedoras/headscarves