The Denison/Kimball Trio
Walls In The City

LA RECENSIONE

In 1994, Duane Denison, the brilliant guitarist of Jesus Lizard, founded the Denison Kimball Three along with James Kimball, who was already responsible for the rhythm section of Mule.

The guitar of the former and the drums of the latter create a spare jazz, grating, and atonal. The notes sketch the scene of a city shaded by the shadows of buildings and the lights of street lamps. In this silence, solitary, suspicious and suspect characters move, who seem to have emerged from the mind of a Raymond Chandler on acid.

“Prelude,” with its cadenced rhythms and atonal sounds, immediately introduces us to an impressionist cinema landscape. In “Cold Light Of Day,” the daylight arrives on jaunty rhythms, but it's a cold light, altered by a scraping guitar. In “One If by the Land,” we follow the sound of bells in a sleepwalking march. “Romantic Interlude” serves as a pause and feels like being in Scorsese's "After Hours," sipping whiskey in a semi-deserted bar, hoping to encounter another solitary soul. But it's just a bluff because, at the moment of paying, the checks are separate. “Separate Checks” indeed speeds up the rhythm just enough to rouse us from the stupor. “Postlude,” perhaps the most dissonant and distorted track, seems to anticipate the sounds of the Friends of Dean Martinez by a year. Finally, “... Two if by Sea” takes us out of the city, where it's finally possible to smell the sea. The dreamlike atmosphere of this last track, if not for the swing outbursts of the guitar, could compete with that of "Ocean Songs," the masterpiece of the Dirty Three.

"Wall in the City" is a fresco of small stories, a musical gem of the '90s. The Denison Kimball Trio crafted a narrative album, a story made of sounds alone that blends jazz, swing, and blues, not without references to avant-garde music.

The Denison Kimball Trio are the forerunners of an erudite post-rock and, following in the footsteps of Laughing Stock by Talk Talk, they stand alongside bands such as Bark Psychosis and June of 44.