Troyka’s last album, Live at Cheltenham Jazz Festival, spliced this British jazz/electronica group’s take-no-prisoners fusion approach with the sound of a big band. But Ornithophobia represents the trio at their most unbuttoned and sometimes their most lyrical. They stir together prog-rock clamours, thrash-jazz, blues, minimalism and a cauldron of other volatile ingredients. The album, enclosed in Spanish comic artist Naiel Ibarrola’s surreal artwork, can be pulsatingly mellow, rippling with Kit Downes’s soft keys lines, then veer off into Zappa-like melodies and thumping electric blues. Spacious movie-soundtrack swoops are accompanied by hip-hop beats, and there are almost motionless stretches of Hammond organ minimalism, mood-music that turns to heavy rock, or spacious reveries like the seductive finale, Seahouses. The title track, inspired by guitarist Chris Montague’s fear of birds, joins jagged figures, weird Latin grooves, murmurs of synth-strings and guitar-hero sprints. Produced by Django Bates collaborator Petter Eldh, Ornithophobia is Troyka’s best album to date, and a kaleidoscopic series of impressions of how fast they’re moving on.
