I don't know what these guys (or this guy) is doing exactly. Sometimes it's a drone, sometimes it's a random chunk of a lecture....look, I don't know what the exact meaning of any of this is. If a fellow listener could shed some enlightenment to a guy who muddles through life with a BA, I would appreciate it. But here's what I strictly give a damn about. I like it ! It holds my attention, it's creative, it's unique. Maybe ancient, ancient Cabaret Voltaire could be a comparison point, but they're too commercial to really compare with this. I suggest you buy it. You probably won't know what the hell it is you're listening to, but I do think you'll have fun. I went right out and bought about 10 more equally inexplicable albums by the Hafler Trio and enjoy them all too. Is it music ? Depends on what you mean.

Seven tracks credited, yet only three tracks on the CD makes a sort of logic. Indeed the titles have a sort of Zen mind-nudging feel to them, which was compounded by reading the interview in TEQ while reviewing this. It opens with a bizarre audio-montage of voice, ambience, found sound & Industrial sample. It might well be described as a DAVID LYNCH abstract Surreal audio statement - a myriad short phrases featuring all manner of sounds, some muffled, some clear, some haunting like a distant call to prayer heard from the desert outside an Eastern city, another from a sterile room in a laboratory, another eavesdropping a conference from afar, other sounds like cross sections of THE HATERS' music. The second track holds mad laughter within it's cold, echoing walls, with warm humming of cold, heartless machines growing from distant subterranean caves. Smooth machine sounds phase in loops, like the souls of the long lost, singing in the very ghosts of human voice. More strange abstractions grow, ambient recordings of muggy warm factories housing apparently benign machines. Often these snatches of sound are calming, yet arranged in such a way that you cannot relax - any moment it could burst into disharmonic noise. An ambient mix of echoed fireworks makes a particularly interesting phrase, followed by what I assume is a montage of water being 'passed'. The next piece, perhaps the longest on the album, leaves the calming sounds to use more interesting combinations of distant human voice, erased of individualism, honed to trace elements. Then we encounter a flock of sheep, again slightly treated, manipulated into a more calming soundtrack. Later on there's the sound of a storm, as heard from a damp porch, with various bass sounds creating a form of rhythm & metal sounds appearing minimally. This fades into another calm-yet-slightly-disturbing phrase with pteradactyl-like sea bird screams & muffled human voice utters. Each phase reappears, yet different, altered or viewed from a different angle. This gives way to smoother sounds, a calming, pacifying drift of non-musical, honed noise. Finally, after having been lulled into a relaxed state for about 10 minutes, you are awakened by muffled voice answering the telephone. THE HAFLER TRIO will continue to intrigue listeners with their audio-abstract sound montages, hopefully for years to come. I'm not an expert in their music, but am beginning to appreciate it more & more. THE GREY AREA should be releasing more soon, but this should sate the gnawing pangs of hunger until then.Originally reviewed for Soft Watch.