Trinity Way

H.U.M. marks the convergence of a triad of kindred spirits with a common goal of expanding consciousness. On Trinity Way their debut release for Rocket Recordings, the cosmic/terrestrial musician/magician triumvirate of Héloïse Zamzam, Olmo Uiutna and Mark Wagner delve into ritualistic audial travelogues which unite mantric repetition, concrète noise and kosmische explorations, the better to transform and enrich the soul. As Héloïse relates, “As researchers we like to leap into the great unknown to find something new. H.U.M. is a place where we can transpose and explore our energy in motion and let ourselves drift away to our visions".

All three acolytes of H.U.M. arrive at this destination from a rich history of experimental music and art - Héloïse and Olmo run the formerly Bristolian and now French-based Zamzamrec , which besides being a record label specialising in tape releases by artists working in psychedelic realms and beyond, they characterise as “a superfuture network, a community of musicians, storytellers, scientists, writers, poets and dreamers”. Mark Wagner, meanwhile, has involved himself in a diverse and vibrant litany of projects, most recently touring as a member of GNOD, and Ahrkh Wagner and is an active practitioner of music as a spiritual medium.

They first spontaneously merged together at the Woolf Festival in Wiltshire, forging a free improvisatory union which they then took on tour to spread as sonic philosophy through Europe and the UK. Following the limited edition cassette We Are One on the Bumtapes label, Trinity Way marks the most expansive and intrepid ascension yet for these psychic travellers, using primal rhythm, earthly resonances and devotional oratory as pathways to uncharted dimensions and higher metaphysical realms.

These trance-like meditations and illuminating visions draw on a plethora of earthly parallels, from the iconoclastic writing of Rimbaud or Artaud to the occultist sound-world of Coil, from the invigorating DIY ethos of the Not Not Fun label to the anarchic sprawl of The Faust Tapes, and with Wagner’s stream-of-consciousness incantations inviting comparisons to both Robert Calvert and Genesis P-Orridge. Yet influences come also for further afield, as testified by ‘l’Âme agit’, a mysterious rework and ode to Françoise Hardy’s French pop classic ‘Comment te dire adieu’ or on ‘Cat-man-do’ which uses Héloïse’s recordings of a shamanic initiation in the Colombian jungle to help conjure an overwhelming air of hypnotic momentum.

Altogether on another wavelength from most of which is dubbed psychedelic music in the second decade of the 21st Century, Trinity Way is a free-flowing odyssey of vivid, hallucinatory intensity. Yet through a marriage of simple ingredients, these three have created an off-the-map album which nonetheless places its feet on the ground and its gaze on the cosmos. As Héloïse herself says; “Trinity Way is a magic door, a sonic portal. Trinity Way is not an escape of the everyday realm but an entrance, a mode, an invitation…”

released June 17, 2016