Under Review

Triodes

Chunked (Modica Music)

Review By Adam Mannegren

Saxophone solos, “solid grooves” and rhythmguitar, oh my! Highly calculated jazz licks become mind numbing in this musical version of Seinfeld’s jeans-and-white-sneakers outfit. This is a smooth jazz 101 album. It sounds a bit like that band that opens for Jay Leno but with some strange modes and scales and some esoteric, yet simple, noodling for a bit more spice. The track “Blue Pepper” for example features a psychedelic and/or drunk guitar solo that is kind of interesting, but otherwise most of this can be found on your local TV weather station. The self-described “genre-jumping instrumental group” play it safe, too safe. So safe it’s almost groan worthy. Even the edgier tracks, like “The Kick,” are scrubbed clean of anything interesting, even with the added distortion on the guitar. They do dabble around other genres a lot though. Reggae, jam-band and funk are fit into the Triodes PG-13 formula. Triodes are good musicians, and they play well together, but it’s just a little too clean and boring. It sounds like TV-interlude music. It isn’t surprising that producer Roberto Occhipinti also writes music for TV and film. Too bad they couldn’t use their technical skills to step outside of the broadcast-safe spectrum and write something a bit less like elevator-music.