Jazz

625 Discos · 5 May 2026

“Pegao” starts with Fermín Suárez alone, bowing the double bass, and by the time Shantala Ferreyra’s clarinet and Gonzalo Goicoechea’s drums come in, the theme is already planted. The three pass solos around without any of them taking charge: they step out of the tune, stretch it and come back. The record goes out under the trio’s name, with no leader, and that is exactly how it plays.

“Lámpara nueva” brings in the tango. Ferreyra lets loose in a long, bittersweet improvisation while Goicoechea won’t sit still underneath, and Suárez closes with a solo you could almost dance to. “Mucho ahora mismo” goes the other way: it begins as a chamber piece, clarinet ringing against very little, and ends in collective improvisation with guest percussionist Andrés Viteri doubling the drums.

“En mayo” is unaccompanied clarinet and runs straight into “Ok/Off”, which has Thelonious Monk’s sideways humour and his cadence. That’s where Suárez picks up the bow.

The record closes on an alternate take of “Mucho ahora mismo”. On a seven-track debut that means handing a seventh of the running order to a variant of something already heard, and it leaves the ending short of “Pegao”, which is where the trio sounds surest.

Ferreyra and Goicoechea both came through the Manuel de Falla Conservatory in Buenos Aires; Suárez is from Rosario and has played classical music, tango, Argentinian folklore and punk. 625 Discos released it on 5 May.

Rating: 7.5/10

Text by Aina Torrents