Label: Intakt Records, 2026
Personnel - Kaja Draksler: piano; Petter Elder: bass; Christian Lillinger: drums.
The modern creative European trio Punkt Vrt. Plastik — comprising Slovenian pianist Kaja Draksler, Swedish bassist Petter Eldh, and German drummer Christian Lillinger — releases its fourth album. All three artists contribute compositions, adhering to unyielding rhythmic intricacy and classical melodicism to shape music that bristles with provocative interplay, freedom, and heightened expressiveness.
Draksler's "Yogen" thrives on a half-step-shifting, mystery-inducing pulse. The pianist opts for motivic figures while the drummer moves from erratic fibrillation to deliberate syncopated fragmentation. This taut flow is regularly interrupted by pacifying jazztronica sections that contrast with the more Rage Against The Machine-inspired thrill of the opening. While Eldh's "Mariatorget 87" also takes a distinctly jazz path, Lillinger's "For Sybille" finds Draksler veering toward a modern classical direction, rich with intervallic friction.
The classical influence runs throughout the album but peaks with Eldh's arrangement of "När Världens Hopp Förtvinat Stod”, a Lutheran chorale written in 1589 by German clergyman and composer Johannes Rhau. Draksler's 4/4 minor-mode piano movements find perfect backing from bass and drums. The classical vein continues on "Mere Punkt”, co-composed by Draksler and Eldh, but shifts sharply for Lillinger's skittish “Vrt", which closes the album with a gallant composure.
Eldh's "Trip" is one of the most gripping pieces, unfurling an oblique groove under a defiant time signature. Despite the complexity, the trio locks together in a fantastic, hooked-up rhythmic flow charged with creative harmonic progressions and tension. If "EKV" sounds progressive and warped, "For A / Kompress" is lyrical, cyclic, and powerful, opening with a dreamy aura that, handled with a firm grip, gradually intensifies. Surprising is hearing the trio lean into a hard-swinging juncture on "Granular Navigation". Lillinger, unapologetic about his triplet-based ride cymbal patterns, wrote the piece; he also offers methodical snare buzz rolls that color a more abstract passage built from clustered chordal angularity.
Punkt Vrt. Plastik engages in absorbing conversations of rhythm and breath, threading in occasional head-nodding grooves that arrive with atypical shapes and feels. The trio continues to seek new perspectives on composition, taking a freewheeling approach throughout. Kompress even offers a wider lens, feeling thoroughly contemporary without burying its influences from other eras. It stands as a fine addition to the group's catalog of state-of-the-art albums.
Favorite Tracks:
01 - Yogen ► 02 - Trip ► 07 - For A / Kompress ► 09 - När Världens Hopp Förtvinat Stod