Staff Reviews

Troyka - Ornithophobia

Review by Jack Doherty

Someone should give Thom Yorke a call. Troyka have the tools make his dream a reality. Well, they would do, if they'd just stop with that dastardly noodling.»

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Troyka are an experimental British trio who make rich and enthralling instrumental music. Featuring Kit Downes (once Mercury nominated in his own right) on hammond/synths, Chris Montague on guitar/loops and Josh Blackmore on drums, Troyka is far more than the sum of its parts and is definitely not your usual Hammond organ trio. Ornithophobia is the London three-piece's third studio album - their first for Naim - and truly marks the fruition of five years' worth of musical experimentation. Influenced by the likes of Tim Berne, Aphex Twin, Deerhoof, Albert King and Flying Lotus, their music is intense, ambitious and iconoclastic. Unpredictable, yet catchy, melodies woven into complex time signatures may be a trade mark of the trio at full swing, but it is the flavours of textural beds, polyrhythmic post-dance, haunting trip-hop and atmospheric post-rock that make this record a sensation of the heart as well as the mind. The album's title, Ornithophobia, was first inspired by guitarist Chris' fear of birds. This became the aptly chaotic groove of the album's title track, which, in turn escalated into an album set in a fictionalised London; a post-apocalyptic dystopian nightmare in which people have contracted a form of avian flu that is slowly turning them into human-size birds and gradually making them lose their minds. If this sounds like the stuff of comics, then you're not far off, as the album artwork encompasses a dark, comic book storyboard, featuring our heroes Troyka, created by artist Naiel Ibarrola.
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