Dirty 3

Dirty Three, a trio from Melbourne ( Warren Ellis on the violin, Mick Turner guitar and Jim White drums ), specialized in lengthy instrumental jams peppered with a seductive mix of folk, blues, jazz and psychedelic rock, echoing the more daring performances of Curved Air and Flock with a touch of David Grisman's “jazzgrass”.

Turner and White had been the pillars of Venom P Stinger, a band fronted by vocalist Dugald MacKenzie that released Meet My Friend Venom (January 1987), What's Yours Is Mine (October 1990) and Tear Bucket (1996).

Dirty Three (Torn & Frayed, 1994 ) ( Touch & Go, 1995 ) ( Big Cat, 1995 ) is the manifesto of this folk-jazz-rock hybrid. The prevailing instrument is Ellis’ violin, played in the way similar to how John Cale played the viola in the Velvet Underground (and sometimes to how Jimi Hendrix played the guitar). Indian Love Song takes a few minutes to get going then it opens up with a raga-like hypnotic rhythm and becomes a neurotic duet of violin and accordion over with the feverish polirhythms of White. Dirty Equation brings to mind the hippy jam sessions of the 1960s, harking back to bands like It’s A Beautiful Day, but powered by the virtuoso verve of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. As if this were not enough, the accordion enhances the sentimental confessions of Odd Couple, and the harmonica takes the lead in the depression of The Last Night.

Sad and Dangerous ( Poon Village, 1995 ) ( Shock, 1995 ) introduced the group as an experimental jazz combo rather than simply an instrumental rock band. On one hand the violin takes up the melancholy folk of Killykundane, You Were a Bum and Warren’s Waltz, on the other hand the rhythmic part highlights the jazzy pieces (Devil in the Hole, Jim’s Dog, Turks) and brings up in Short Break a temporary climax of noise.

Horse Stories ( Touch & Go, 1996 - Anchor & hope, 1996 - Big Cat, 1996 ) begins in the style of Irish folk music played in a sleepy mood (1000 Miles) and rounds up in a ravaged and martial theme with a slight gipsy touch ( Warren’s Lament). However, the album’s core lies in the free, dreamlike and trascendent structures of the other tracks, all dominated by Ellis’ violin. Sue’s Last Ride sets the tone: the violin takes up the melody and draws the dance into ever more incandescent whirls, more Oriental than American. In Hope the instrument intones desperate, subdued, almost wailing, the melodic theme before relaxing joyfully in a kind of minimalist adagio in the style of Michael Nyman. In Horse it stubbornly repeats its mantra, set against the sound background of the great prairie, overturning the role of the “fiddle” in cowboy music. The violin which blathers on senselessly in At the Bar or which peevishly mutters in I knew It Would Come To This is the absolute protagonist of the show.

Ellis invented a remarkably expressive language, worthy of a human voice. The logorrhoic and depressed performance of the instrument covers all strains of mood, but excels especially in evoking the melancholy conditions of the soul. Its dialectics brings to mind the dynamics of ragas: beginning with a chaotic improvisation, where the instrument seems to be searching for the right tuning, then a gradual and unstoppable build up towards an ever more intense and hypnotic climate. The other instruments seem to disappear.

Dirty Three, Horse Stories and Sad and Dangerous promoted this Australian combo to the top of the most sophisticated instrumental groups of the 1990s. Mick Turner’s guitar counterpoints in almost a dissonant way the pining melodies of Warren Ellis’ violin. Jim White fills in the spaces with an elegant tapestry of open rhythms. The result is warm and gentle, the exact opposite of what is to be expected from such an abstract and intellectual program of strictly instrumental music.

Their fourth album, Ocean Songs (Touch & Go, 1998 ) ( Anchor & hope, 1998 ) ( Bella Union, 1998 ), is in fact a concept dedicated to the sea. All the tracks recall a sea images, both in their title and in their atmosphere. This is an album for poets who love sitting on the beach contemplating rainbows, sky and seagulls. What can draw the larger public to this album are the melancholic and somnolent themes, and jazzed up, of Sirena and Backwards Voyager, halfway between the Cowboy Junkies and the Palace Brothers, but without words. This work however overflows also with delicate artistic moments, with the violin mimicking the waves in Restless Waves and nostalgic themes lacerating the languishing melodies of Distant Shore and Ends of The Earth (with piano). This is music sometimes of still silences, like in Last Horse on the Sand; which practically glides over the minimalist breaks, but always in their own way, with all three instruments evoking something, like in Black Tide: the drums being the surf, the violin the wind, the guitar gargling. The best of their subtle artistry is to be found in long philosophical wanderings like Authentic Celestial Music (nine minutes) enveloped in a martial beat and left to die off in tenuous tinkling chords. The violin is definitely a voice (humble and defeated ) of the existential anguish of our time. The sixteen minutes of delirium in Deep Waters, plumbing the deepest recesses of the human mind, at the same time give free rein to solemn prayers from those dephts of loneliness. For a few seconds a viola accompanies the violin and once again strikes up a minimalist dance and takes it along into a final burst of what is almost raga. The means, if not the performance, bring to mind John Fahey’s trascendent period.

In the meantime Mick Turner recorded a solo LP, Tren Phantasma (Drag City, 1997), and a duet with Jim White, the Tren Brothers, who debuted with the EP Tren Brothers (Drag City, 1998). This half hour of music is a worthy appendix to Ocean Songs, in particular Gold Star Berlin, Last Song Detroit and Away, and the single Gone Away / Kit's Choice (Secretly Canadian, 1998).

Mick Turner, Dirty 3's guitar, has recorded by himself Marlan Rosa (Drag City, 1999), another assembly of fifteen instrumental pieces which rely on the languid and apatic chords of his instrument. His improvisations, in the tradition of Jim O'Rourke, aim at the most subliminal of trances, not at the spiritual trance of a John Fahey. Turner's style has mutated towards a higher degree of "moaning", towards a more convoluted form of physical expression. Harmonies are extremely complex, even if they are conceived as to flow soft and quiet. The project now echoes of Brian Eno's ambient music, merely additioned of casual noises which bridge Turner's solo music with the scores of his band.
Kudos for the fairy tale and eastern melodies of Rosa I, the hypnotic atmosphere of Arana I and Calavera, the subtle chaos of Marlan II, the watery breezes of Rosa II, the slow-motion and sad waves of Arana II and Marlan IV. A few songs slow down the pace till complete stasis: There's A Great Burning Red Moon Rising On The Lake is not a song, it is a photograph. The long and orchestral ballad El Arbol, even hummed by Turner, sounds like an outtake from another album. All in all, this is another mastery attempt at reinventing the sound of the guitar, or, better, the way the sound of the guitar makes music, and the way guitar music "sounds".

Following the EP UFKUKO (Bella Union, 1999), the soundtrack for the movie Praise, and an intense activity as Nick Cave's side musicians, the Dirty Three's Whatever You Love You Are (Touch & Go, 2000) finally returns to the austere chamber music of Ocean Songs. The six extended instrumental tracks reveal a much stronger classical influence, possibly a result of the band being involved in several avantgarde events. Some Summers They Drop Like Flys develops at a funereal pace that echoes Gypsy and Jewish music (halfway between the Doors' The End and the Velvet Underground's Venus In Furs) while violin and guitar soar in an acrobatic counterpoint worthy of Bach and Vivaldi. The cadence of I Really Should've Gone Out Last Night borrows its slow elegance from renaissance madrigals and the violin's dirge is basically a sonata whose tones have been stretched in long drones reminscent of Tibetan music. (The leitmotiv is reminiscent of the Red House Painters' Down Colorful Hill).
I Offered It Up To The Stars is perhaps their most ambitious composition so far. The short (drum-less) interlude openly flirts with minimalism and Arvo Part. The second movement opens with spare dissonant tones over a bleak background of martial percussions. Finally, the violin unfolds a bluesy tune and the drums drive the rhythm to a forceful crescendo. The effect is not unlike the Pink Floyd's psychedelic opus A Saucerful Of Secrets.
The cinematic quality of their music is in full display on Some Things I Just Don't Want To Know, the ideal soundtrack for vast desert lands: tender melodies, lazy tones, casual percussions, a sense of solitude and infinite. Lullaby For Christie closes the album on a lighter, romantic note.
Nonetheless the roots of these tracks are still in country and folk music. There is an instrinsic roughness in the way they are played (the timbres, the tempos, the drumming), in opposition to the crisp choice of sounds that characterizes today's avantgarde composer, that sets them firmly in the "popular" field. They exhale rock and roll, blues-rock, folk-rock, acid-rock, punk-rock, new wave, and so forth: they embody the history of rock music, although they project it on a different screen. Warren Ellis and Mick Turner rank among the most accomplished composers (if not performers) of their age.

Low and Dirty Three recorded an installment of the series titled In The Fishtank (Subpop, 2001), five shorts and one long Neil Young cover. If I Hear Goodnight sounds merely like Low with Warren Ellis on violin, When I Called Upon Your Seed is a country gem. But the album is not a major work for either band.

Lowlands (Anchor And Hope, 2001), Dirty 3's most subdued album ever, is unusually eloquent in the guitar parts and unusually restrained in the violin parts. Dispensing with the piano, the trio has trouble achieving the same magic quality of the early records. Even the best tracks, Kangaroo and Lowlands, sound like rehearsals for major suites still to finalize.

The Tren Brothers project returned with the single Swing (Chapter, 2002), that features violinist Jessica Billey.

Warren Ellis entered the realm of chamber music with Three Pieces For Violin (King Crab, 2002). The first piece has a frantic development that alternates between a looping Paganini solo, a convoluted Webern counterpoint and a Michael Nyman-ian crescendo. The second piece borrows the pseudo-raga pace and the vehement staccato from John Cale's viola part in Velvet Underground's Venus In Furs, and then pushes the idea to symphonic proportions. The third piece sounds like Japanese koto music translated into languid, ebbing and flowing drones.

Mick Turner's Moth (Drag City, 2002) collects 19 haiku-like melodic miniatures for guitar and guests. With the exception of the 14th piece (a soaring, ode-like refrain that could be a pop hit), the emphasis is not on hummable melodies but on texture and atmosphere. The languid, soothing third piece and the melancholy, autumnal watercolor of the fifth piece frame the mood. Occasionally the program ventures more metaphysical territory, like the lively, wave-like osmosis between guitar and accordion in the ninth piece (the most "Indian" piece here), or the zen-like trance of the sixth piece (the hypnotic chatter of the guitar set against a droning accordion).

Dirty Three's She Has No Strings Apollo (Touch & Go, 2003) is, by their standards, a simple, unassuming album. The haphazard propulsive raga of Alice Wading is one of their most accessible compositions ever, and possibly the first one that can even be danced to. All instruments repeat their pattern in a concerted effort to produce rhythm, with the violin imitating John Cale's demonic viola. The creative momentum of the album ends here.
The trio's secret has always been the juxtaposition of three individual styles that mostly collide, or at least do not attempt traditional counterpoint, each one maintaining its own personality and "competing" with the others for control of the flow of sound. Here, instead, Mick Turner plays far more linear than on his solo records, Jim White tends to follow rather than lead and Warren Ellis grants few of his hallucinated fits opting instead for melodic leads.
The calm, pastoral, elegiac Long Way To Go With No Punch (driven by Warren's piano) and No Stranger Than That (a belated return to the trio's "oceanic" sound, but in a "new-agey" version) are typical of the album's laid-back canon, and of the trio's newly-found focus on melody.
A couple of tracks display a jazzier stance, which translates into more organic and visceral motion: She Has No Strings (with a soaring violin solo and the Mahavishnu Orchestra-like jamming), and Rude (a mournful elegy that erupts with Jimi Hendrix-ian riffs).
A dearth of imaginative instrumental duels limits the beauty of the textures. Some of the passages sound strained, unfocused and sterile. For the band that has recorded masterpieces such as Horse Stories and Whatever You Love You Are, this is passable at best.

The Dirty Three finally experimented with vocals on Cinder (Touch & Go, 2005), thanks to guest vocalists Chan Marshall (Cat Power) and Sally Timms (the Mekons). The former's Great Waves succeeds in matching the trio's loose textures with a melancholy human voice, while the latter's abstract vocalizing is disposable. Done with those two brief detours, the instrumentals still run the show, as brooding and impressionistic as ever. Classic group interplay is showcased in the neurotic Flutter, in the romantic In Fall, in the atmospheric Too Soon Too Late and in the aneimic Rain On. It is not only the vocals that are new. The convergence of funk and folk overtones in Doris, a few danceable moments, an increased reliance on external instruments betray an eagerness to forsake past cliches. But 19 tracks are way too many for what the trio has to say in 2005.

The Tren Brothers' EP The Swimmer (Western Vinyl, 2005) contains four quiet songs.

Blue Trees (Drag City, 2007) is split between a side of solo Mick Turner guitar and a side of duets with White (as the Tren Brothers),

Warren Ellis was distracted by Nick Cave's Grinderman project (of which the violinist was the sonic pillar) and the Dirty Three lived in different places (Turner also became a painter). They finally found the time to record again for the all-instrumental Toward the Low Sun (2012), that contains two of their wildest numbers (Furnace Skies and That Was Was) as well as the touching Ashen Snow.

The Dirty Three released Love Changes Everything (2024) after a hiatus of twelve years.