Garage A Trois is a modern day jazz supergroup, featuring Stanton Moore (Galactic) on drums, Marco Benevento (Marco Benevento Trio, Benevento/Russo Duo, Surprise Me Mr. Davis) on keyboards, Skerik (Skerik’s Syncopated Septet, Les Claypool’s Frog Brigade) on saxophone, and Mike Dillon (Mike Dillon’s Go-Go Jungle, Les Claypoll’s Fancy Band) on vibes and percussion. The band’s new album, Power Patriot is their first album since Benevento replaced founding member guitarist Charlie Hunter represents a shift away from Hunter’s groove influenced funk and towards a more chaotic, dissonant brand of jazz. However, this album still grooves. Galactic drummer Stanton Moore has spent years in New Orleans as one of the city’s most in demand funk and jazz drummers, and his groove ensures that the band generally steers clear of free jazz dissonant freakouts.
Having said that, this album is certainly more experimental than any music they have created before, yet strangely listenable. In many ways the addition of Benevento frees Garage A Trois, as his musical vision is much more similar to the weirdness of Skerik and Dillon than Hunter’s was. And in live concerts Garage A Trois take these songs to some pretty crazy places, but on the record, melody dominates. The songs are all unusual, written in weird time structures and include an assortment of bizarre noises from Benevento’s keyboards, but have strong melodies and riffs that make them not only listenable but catchy. “Dory’s Day Out” and “Electric Door Bell Machine” will get stuck in your head, and the riffs in “Power Patriot” and “Fragile” are pure rock and roll, while “Purgatory” offers spaced out bliss and “Computer Crimes” a glimpse of Marco Benevento’s mad genius at work. Garage A Trois still shine brightest on a live stage but this studio is rock solid, great grooves and melody, and plenty of instrumental weirdness.
