Tara Clerkin Trio

Folk ditties and acid jazz, dub production and electronic textures, coruscant drones and boom-bap beats: Tara Clerkin Trio is a reminder of how much musical energy can stem from unexpected recombination, of how new a few old sounds can feel when they meet. Long before Clerkin and brothers Sunny-Joe Paradiso and Patrick Benjamin became the Trio, they were enterprising young members of Bristol’s teeming scene, bounding among acts that ranged from feral garage-rock to brittle noise. They eventually coalesced as the Tara Clerkin Band, an octet whose communal-psych sensibility never really made it to tape before five members took their leave. Tara Clerkin Trio emerged from those who stuck around.

These three do so much with very little, thanks not only to the versatility of the members but also to the ingenuity with which they stitch and bend layers. “Brigstow,” from 2023’s fascinating On the Turning Ground, finds a trance-inducing space between klezmer, gamelan, and kosmische drone; “Marble Walls” summons Animal Collective and Broadcast, Clerkin’s layered acoustic guitars and crisscrossed harmonies rippling over a rhythm section that finds the pocket and seems to build there a lush garden of variegated keyboards. There is a sense of wondrous possibility to everything Tara Clerkin Trio has made, as if they are plotting their way forward in real time, inviting the listener along into the unexpected.