Robert Diack: Lost Villages
Robert Diack

The concept underpinning Toronto-based drummer Robert Diack's debut album will certainly resonate with Ontarians. The Lost Villages title, you see, refers to developments from the 1950s that saw residents in nine communities and townships in Southern Ontario displaced by the St. Lawrence Seaway; in linking the area to the Atlantic Ocean using a collection of waterways, lakes now exist in places where cozily inhabited homes once stood. Thematically, the material thus has to do with the experience of loss, displacement, and the impact of industrial development on communities large and small.

Diack's used this historical event as a conceptual springboard for an eight-track album whose instrumental contents might be described as post-rock for want of a better term. Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Philip Glass are cited as influences on a project that also threads elements of classical minimalism, ambient, and jazz into its concise thirty-eight-minute presentation. The drummer, who studied jazz at the University of Toronto, is joined on the recording by pianist Jacob Thompson, bassist Brandon Davis, and versatile guitarist Patrick O'Reilly.

All four dig into the material with energy and conviction, the enthusiasm of their playing doing much to bolster the album's appeal. Of the four, it's Diack and O'Reilly who are the most dominant, though Thompson is also prominent on occasion. The leader's a powerful and resourceful drummer, but it's O'Reilly on whose shoulders much of the album rests. He's at the front-line for much of it and rises to the occasion with playing that's fiery or delicate where required. During “Pluterperfect,” for instance, he voices the riff using a sharp-edged tone that lends the material a metal edge and then cranks up the wah-wah for a blazing solo; his contributions to “Sap,” on the other hand, are often textural in character.

Two four-bar figures serve as the framework the musicians work with for the brief overture “Displace,” their playing growing ever more dynamic as the layers accumulate and the heat rises, and the pattern continues into “Bittered” when a simple four-note motif is used to introduce the piece. Diack's jazz persona emerges during “Idyll” in the quartet's free-flowing handling of its piano-led sprawl. “Lacuna,” by comparison, exudes a rather breezy folk-rock vibe, whereas “Reliquary” initially assumes a somewhat classical feel when introduced elegantly by Thompson before turning anthemic when O'Reilly enters with an epic lead. The pianist's delicate, ballad-styled playing on the lilting closer “Placed” also leaves a strong impression.

As enjoyable a listen as Lost Villages is, it's not without weakenesses. Compositionally the material would have benefited from finessing; rooted in simple melodic patterns, many pieces are less fully developed compositions and more basic structures or chord progressions the musicians build upon; as engaging as it is, “Lacuna,” to cite one instance, is little more than a vamp. The energy and conviction the four bring to the performances tend to make that compositional deficiency less noticeable, but it's present nonetheless; furthermore, a moment or two arises when a track abruptly ends precisely at the point where further development might have been the better choice (e.g., “Reliquary”).

April 2018