Immediate. It’s an apt title for an album that deals exclusively in the now, that focuses on the moment at hand without dwelling on the past or navel-gazing into the future. Improvised over a mammoth one-day studio session in April this year by 3ofmillions – Adrian Klumpes (Triosk, Pivot), Abel Cross (Trio Apoplectic, Pure Evil Trio) and Ryan Finn (at 17, too young to have been in any bands of note yet) – Immediate traverses the group’s various histories and interests in jazz, micro-sound and electro-acoustic improvisation.

‘Her Subtlety in My Subconsious’ starts with Klumpes’s lightly processed piano and Finn’s feather-touch percussion, to which Cross adds hauntingly spare bass notes about a minute in. From there, the track builds slowly, incrementally; the piano adding more and more notes until it becomes a twinkling cascade with the bass and percussion following suit. ‘The Toll’ is more abstract, littered with background noise and led by Klumpes’ tumbledown piano and Finn’s skittering cymbals. The disjointed stabs of ‘Inconvenient Thankyou’ introduces a much more visceral side of the trio, especially as the track climaxes in a thunderous roar of percussion and low, low bass rumbles.

The intensity of ‘Inconvenient Thankyou’ is carried through on the next triumvirate of pieces. ‘The Hand of God’, which boasts edits that would make Venetian Snares blush, is Immediate’s most intense track; ‘Conscription’, while less cut-up than its predecessor, still manages to feel like a titanium drill-bit boring into your temple; and the bipolar ‘Improvised Explosive Device’ lulls you into submission with gentle ivory tickling, before randomly igniting into flames of incendiary snare rushes and white-hot harsh noise.

‘Wasteland’ sees the group surveying the damage of the past three tracks, picking up the pieces – clattering junk percussion and abstract almost-melodies – in an attempt to rebuild. Finally, all of this comes together in the album’s 21-minute closer, ‘Accepting What Is’, which despite its heroic length never meanders.

Collective improvisation of the kind that gave rise to Immediate relies on an incredibly delicate balance being struck between being sympathetic to the sounds coming from those around you while still being confident of your own voice not to shrink into the background. And though the members of 3ofmillions’ skills in this regard were never in question – if their individual resumes weren’t enough to prove it to you, then Golden Calf, a 3” CD-R borne out of the same session, should definitely have been – Immediate settles the matter once and for all.

by Adam D Mills