Devin Drobka Trio - Resorts (2021)

There was ending, this much we know. The ache is inescapable. But Resorts, the new album by Devin Drobka Trio, doesn’t foist a narrative on us. It instead creates prismatic environments for us to quietly discover our own.



Resorts is as much an ambient record as it is a jazz record, as much Trent Reznor as Sonny Rollins. Drobka’s papery paresthetic snare brushes whisper; his toms and Aaron Darrell’s bass melt into one another. Matt Blair’s piano intervals are as open as radiator pings; other times, his tumbling lines echo Ravel’s sentimental waltzes.



These compositions began as Drobka’s voice memo sketches, alone, at home, as home was being redefined. And while the gorgeous sound of Resorts will delight audiophiles, the spirit of the record is still very much in line with those first demos. The captured intimate moments and room sounds put you voyeuristically in the room (and catapult Wire & Vice toward the top of the list of midwestern destination studios for capturing restless jazz).



On “Soon” the quiet is shocking. Blair’s wide piano intervals leave the house so empty that we hear Drobka’s drums make tea for one while the furnace kicks on. The bass follows a wandering thought and the piano, looking away, quietly confirms its suspicion. The cymbals, no longer brassy, flushed hot with embarrassment.



In “Bounce” the near-harmonium bowed bass drones a mantra beneath the rising outline of Debussy-esque piano chords while the toms roll to a boil, finally rattling the lid off the watched pot. “Box Invention” is leaving the house for the first time. The noise of the outside world, once an indifferent partner, is now just indifferent.



“Rims” reprises “Bounce” but in doing so turns it into a kind of “Dance of the Dream Man” from Twin Peaks and begins to herald some kind of divinity at work, hinting at the quiet redemption of “Teeter” which simply needs to be experienced. Resorts is an album for small moments that contain black holes, the heaviness collapsing into itself. 



Resorts is an album about change. The word ‘resort’ might conjure escape. The ‘resort’ closest to the spirit of Resorts is to have recourse, to re-sort, to sort again.

 - Christopher Porterfield, Field Report