Released in November last year, and with the vinyl arriving just as 2024 closed out, Lifted's first record for Peak Oil escaped our further attentions for no other reason than timing. A new year it might be, but Trellis requires a revisit and a more indepth appraisal, representing absolutely one of the most adventurous long players the already highly esteemed label has put its name to. Trellis is, to these ears at least, a record very much of the current moment, drawing a line across the underground nodes of contemporary America in a way that connects the zoned-out new-age neology of LA's Leaving Records, the jazz-not-jazz cottage industry of International Anthem in Chicago and something a little more cooly east coast ala Public Records and the missing-in-action 2 Bridges. It's not inconsequential the duo have previously released on PAN, a label aptly named for its criss-cross approach to sound and genre. On Trellis, Max D and Matt Papich are joined by Dustin Wong, Mezey, and Jeremy Hyman, an arrangement that began back in 2021 and one that establishes a more notable in-the-room feel of a band, where live drums and a sense of intuited improvisation is allied with processed electronics and a kind of warped tape wooziness. It's not unlike the type of thing we've heard at various Tara Clerkin Trio live performances, where sound is privileged as highly as song, while there's an overall feeling of the same jazz-offset uncanny valley Sam Gendel has fashioned for himself the past half decade+. A nailed on late in the year highlight that deserves to shine on long into this next one.
