LISTEN:
There is a certain magical quality to the number three. Where two provides balance and polarity, three introduces unexpected and surprising variances. Three is a radical catalyst. Take the three songs that form Revolution C, the EP from Construction & Destruction’s Colleen Collins and David Trenaman and their long-time friend and occasional collaborator, Steven Lambke. Three songwriters and performers, separate and unique like the three primary colours, each bring their own perspective to the songs in a way that blends to formulate new colours and hues.
Revolution C is not a Construction & Destruction record with Steve Lambke as a guest, nor is it the other way around. It was not planned or proposed. A spur of the moment opportunity found the three friends with available studio time (Studio C at Toronto’s Revolution Recording, hence the name). “Failed Alchemy”, with its piano-heavy heart, balances the weightlessness of Collins’s near-whispered voice, which in turn acts as a counterpoint to her partner’s contribution, “Expanding Universe”. Trenaman’s track is at turns an eerie dirge and a soulful slow rock groove, framing the three friends’ haunting harmonies. Lambke’s “At the Start of a Song” is the ballad that bounces in the spaces between. Lambke’s meta-musings, quickly written after waking up in Daniel Romano’s house the morning after the last show of a tour is the free radical atom igniting a chemical reaction that burns throughout Revolution C.
You get the innate sense that the results would be markedly different had any more thought and time gone into the process; not diminished, just different in hue and tone. The trio suggests that there will be more collaborations, more new colours and musical connection to conjure. That’s not surprising; I imagine the energy generated in that studio on that particular day created momentum and energy that will be hard for Collins, Trenaman, and Lambke to contain.
