“The attitude is punk and interactive”. This sentence from the presentation of Rocthem! synthesizes the spirit of this bass-less, guitar-less, piano-less German trio, notwithstanding this writer’s perception of the interactivity factor more than punkness: these guys can play. To quote a famous Monk, well, you needn’t. You needn’t to be bound to instrumental stereotypes to express simultaneous opinions, mostly intelligently. You needn’t a huge acoustic arsenal to conjure up heated counterpoints cooled by sense of humor. Ultimately, you needn’t to grumble about socio-political afflictions when the ideal weapon to fight just everything is improvisational resourcefulness (admittedly, not a so common gift around).
The eight tracks are marked by complex light-heartedness, consciousness of where the other stands during the performance and – especially – a constitutional ability in producing contrapuntal perturbation. Whatever Griener, Koch and Weidekamp feel appropriate to emit appears inspired by the clever quotational omnivorousness typical of inventive wizards such as Frank Zappa or Spike Jones, of course with the due proportions. The spontaneous inspection of troublesome metres does not hinder a committed melodic legwork, although one won’t find a singable line by searching with a lantern. Themroc 3 are certainly aware of their jazz roots, but absolutely not servants to the genre (as one could also guess from the label’s name, perhaps). A brilliant miniaturized circus to defeat the doldrums of this lame summer.
MASSIMO RICCI. TOUCHING EXTREMES. 