Elf Traps

Formed in Manchester, Elf Traps brings together drummer Rob Turner and keyboardist Liviu Gheorghe, two musicians who have taken part in notable projects on the British jazz scene, notably GoGo Penguin for the former and the circle around Matthew Halsall for the latter. Conceived outside the framework of their respective groups, Elf Traps was built around years of research with the aim of exploring a freer language between writing, improvisation and electronic textures. The duo develops instrumental music at the crossroads of spiritual jazz, ambient, jungle and fragmented electronics, where Rob Turner’s repetitive, nerve-wracking rhythms dialogue with the synth pads, harmonic motifs and the more atmospheric spaces worked by Liviu Gheorghe. Elf Traps thus sits in a porous zone between the contemporary jazz scene and listening electronic music, with a marked taste for evolving forms, density contrasts and immersive atmospheres. Still relatively new, the Elf Traps project circulates initially in intimate and underground contexts, where its identity is clarified by the direct interplay between the two musicians and by an open approach to composition.