Eight years into playing together, East of West have reached the stage where three instruments can change direction inside a phrase and retain complete confidence in each other. The ARIA-nominated Queensland trio brings together Goran Gajić on double bass, Philip Griffin on oud and laouto, and Malindi Morris on percussion, with personal histories stretching through Bosnia, New Zealand and England. Velella, their fourth release, catches them at a particularly interesting point: technical fluency has become instinct, and instinct has begun reshaping the compositions.
The album belongs to Mediterranean and Balkan traditions, contemporary jazz and folk practice, though its character comes from the way authority keeps changing hands, with every player getting to redirect the room.
photo by Aimee Catt
That shared authority gives the record its tension. Gajić’s bass frequently establishes the first physical fact, a low note, a pulse or a compact melodic figure that Griffin can circle, answer or pull sideways. The oud and laouto bring brightness to a low-register ensemble, yet Griffin uses their attack with considerable restraint, letting a phrase ring long enough for the bass to alter its meaning underneath. Morris operates across a wider range of functions than the word percussion usually suggests. She colours the silence, marks structural turns, disturbs repeated figures and occasionally takes command of the form herself. I spent much of my first listen following the string dialogue and gradually realised Morris had been controlling my sense of scale all along. A small change in texture could make the trio sound suddenly close; a forceful entrance could widen the music in seconds. The results carry an unusual kind of calm, with surface warmth sitting above intricate counting, rapid unison lines and constant decisions about who leads the next movement. East of West make those decisions sound conversational, though the precision remains audible in the way a melody transfers between instruments with its shape intact. This is where eight years of collaboration matters. The improvisations have purpose because each musician understands the others’ habits well enough to challenge them, and the written sections retain flexibility because the trio treats them as living material. Velella captures three players using familiarity as permission to take risks.
My first response to the album included a desire for a sharper rupture. Several pieces occupy a related low-lit temperature, and their rounded tones can cause neighbouring sections to merge during a casual play. I wanted one passage to arrive with rougher edges and rearrange the album’s centre of gravity. The second listen changed the size of that complaint. What had sounded uniform began revealing minute differences in pressure, timing and density, especially when Morris moved from ornament to open soloing. Some stretches still settle too comfortably into the trio’s preferred atmosphere, yet the record rewards the attention it quietly demands.
Whenever Velella approaches that comfort zone, rhythm supplies the strongest source of friction. Camille places its melody inside 11/8, though the meter lands with the ease of spoken language because the players emphasise momentum over arithmetic. The uneven count creates a gentle rolling motion and gives the tune a personal warmth that suits its origin as a birthday gift. Dancing Leaves offers another useful glimpse of the album’s development, with composed material and open improvisation passing back and forth until leadership becomes difficult to assign. These pieces represent the album effectively because their complexity serves movement, character and interaction. The musicianship announces itself through control, then gets out of the way of the music. Across the rest of the record, place appears through weather, crowded rooms, migration, family gatherings and small acts of observation. East of West use these subjects as starting coordinates while leaving the anecdotes around them open. A Brisbane street, a distant coastline or a search through tropical trees enters the music through rhythm and mood, leaving literal illustration outside the frame. That choice protects the album from turning into a sequence of musical postcards. The trio understands place as something carried in the body: a remembered cadence, the pace of a gathering, the tension before a storm, the slight disorientation of arriving somewhere surrounded by ocean. Their backgrounds matter because these references have been lived, exchanged and reshaped within the group.
The title comes from Velella velella, a tiny marine colony carried across the ocean surface by wind. It sounds at first like an image of surrender, though the album reveals another reading. Drifting requires continual adjustment to forces already in motion, and East of West play with that same responsiveness. A composition provides direction, an improvised phrase changes the current, and the group adjusts together. The metaphor earns its place because the music has enough discipline to move freely while preserving a distinct shape.
What stayed with me after several plays was the active quality of Velella’s restraint. Every relaxed phrase depends on three musicians listening closely, making fast decisions and leaving exactly enough room for the next idea to arrive. The album occasionally circles a familiar emotional temperature, and a stronger jolt or two would deepen its overall shape. Its finest passages, however, show a trio whose collective reflexes have become part of the composition itself. East of West have made a record about motion whose power comes from pacing as readily as speed, and about cultural memory carried through sound and allowed to speak for itself. Velella floats, certainly, but somebody is always reading the wind.
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