root salad Les Triaboliques
Three familiar faces applying fingers to fretful pursuits. Jamie Renton investigates the Three Duskateers.
I
t’s dusk and you’re leaving the city, not for some rural haven of peace, but rather somewhere dark, edgy but strangely beautiful. That’s the place
that Rivermudtwilight (World Village), last year’s debut album from Les Triaboliques, conjures up for me. The trio of Brit roots/ world music stalwarts Justin Adams, Ben Mandelson and Lu Edmonds have created something that works best as night is falling and the music can wrap its twangy tendrils round your ears. “The dawn of British dusk-core reveals its greatest trio,” is how Ben M (a man who’s never short of a snappy phrase or ten) describes this project.
The three of them came together thanks to some old school record compa- ny patronage. Back in 2005 René Goiffon, head honcho of Harmonia Mundi/ World Village, invited the ‘Three Duskateers’ (another Mandelsonism) to work togeth- er. Getting the project off the ground took four years but, inspite of the recent downturn in the record biz’s fortunes, Goiffon stayed true to his word and in 2009 bankrolled some no-strings- attached, play-what-you-please studio time with producer Rob Keyloch.
Ben, Justin and Lu had crossed paths on many occasions over the years – Ben and Lu famously in the 3 Mustaphas 3 – but this was the first time the three had worked together. The mood of the album was set, in part at least, by Lu who used a trick he’d learnt as a member of The Mekons of dreaming up a few phrases that set the tone (they came up with things like ‘leaving the city’ and ‘twilight’). “That helps,” notes Ben, “because otherwise you
end up trying to do everything with every- thing and you can’t. You’ve got to have a focus. I think we tried to play as an ensem- ble to create a mood, I don’t think there’s any great ‘Guitars on Fire’ solos.”
Most of the songs are credited to all
three Triabs, although they were composed in a variety of ways: some were brought to the party by one person and then built on by the rest, others developed out of jams in rehearsals. The title track was sculpted into a whole by producer Keyloch from impres- sionistic mood pieces played by band mem- bers. There are also a couple of traditional tunes, a slowed down, moody reading of Anglo-US standard Jack O’ Diamonds and the melancholy eastern European Jewish song Hora Anicuta Draga performed in a medley with Don’t Let Me Be Misunder- stood (much covered but probably best known via the Nina Simone version).
“Often you can better understand a band by the way they treat a cover of a song that you know very well. That helps as a key to getting into a band,” reckons Ben. Then there’s Gulaguajira (I, The Disso- lute Prisoner), a 1950s Russian gangster song delivered by Lu over a loping West African groove. “Orchestra Triabab” as Ben puts it. “I think we’re old enough and inhabit the stuff enough to make it feel like we live in that kind of sonic zone.”
The album feels at its right-est, to my ears at least, when played at dusk. “It’s a kind of Triaboliques’ evening raga vol- ume. The idea of music for certain times of day is seen as a bit of a conceit, but for a lot of the rest of the world, it’s a valid
artistic and philosophical thing and so… why not? Like any good down-home medicine, it can be taken at any time of day, but it is a dusk-flowering object, a crepuscular, vespertine record.”
They see themselves among revivers of the string band tradition. “In the 1910s, ‘20s and ‘30s, there was no shame to have on a record ‘vocals with string band accom- paniment’; we’ve kind of lost that concept and it’s nice to bring that back, although I do transgress, because I play a flute with no holes on one number.” Otherwise, it’s Justin on guitar with Ben and Lu plucking any stringed things they can lay their plec-
trums on (saz, mandolin, cümbüş, kabosy). And it isn’t the only string band trio Ben and Lu play in of course, there’s also Blue Blokes Three with Ian Anderson. “I think BB3 is probably the kitchen band and Tri- abs is the garage version thereof.”
Given the workloads of all con-
cerned – Justin off rocking the Afro blues with Juldeh Camara and just rocking with Robert Plant, Ben and Lu helping to put the world to rights as members of Billy Bragg’s Blokes and occasionally BB3ing, Lu working with John Lydon’s Public Image Ltd and The Mekons, and Ben with the intriguingly titled Yiddish Twist Orches- tra – it’s been difficult for them to get together to play live, but when they do, they love it. “We make the audience sing with us in all different languages and we’re taking some nice risks. We listen to each and try to play the mood all the time, try to play three instruments as one.”
They’re hitting the road for their first proper tour this November, for details see:
www.myspace.com/lestriaboliques F
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