The Remedy
of Abstraction


A Triggering Myth Album Reviews

Ytsejam.com, March 2006
Review by Tommy Hash

You have to hand it to a band that opens up a record with a chaotic soundscape titled ‘Now That My House Has Burned Down, I Have A Beautiful View Of The Moon.” Not only does the lengthy titled connotate a complete freak out musical landscape, the music itself provides in introspective look into the melding of free jazz and prog-rock. A project of keyboardists Tim Drunheller and Rick Eddy (with many guests), the duo gives us these sporadic jumpy movements of synths/keys (lots of them), crunched and acoustic guitars, buzzy fretless bass (ala-Michael Manring), violin, and a highly aggressive percussive attack to perpetrate such edgy, but at times, subdued material.

Sounding a bit like early Kansas, At War With Self, Jim Matheos’ solo material, and King Crimson (well I guess you could say it sounds like jazzier At War With Self fronting Robert Fripp), the art rock jazz fusion that A Triggering Myth provides is highly sophisticated with smooth melodies found within cuts like ‘The Eisenhour Slumber’ and the title cut; however complete contrast can be found with thin the aggravated emotion that is present within ditties such as ‘When Emily Dickinson Learned to Lunge’ (the title says it all), ‘Shakespeare’s Strippers,’ and the haunting ‘Not Even Wrong,’ which altogether, makes the record an impressive feat.

Impressive in the fact that everybody on this album was able to meld this schizophrenic grove with an often-lighthearted musical backdrop. Sound impossible, well by no means is the record mellow, nor is it completely avant-garde; in fact it even includes melodies that are highly catchy rather than being ‘out there’. In the end, ‘The Remedy of Abstraction’ is a new phase in art rock stamina that raises the bar for such complex, but yet intriguing material.