Vio 3i0: 'Viology'

Combining electronics and acoustic instruments in contemporary jazz, there’s a palpable excitement to ‘Viology’, the new album from ViO 3iO. This jazz trio is fronted by ground-breaking sax player and electronic whizz Viktor Haraszti, who I interviewed for Harmonious World in March 2022. You can listen to that episode here.

Improvisation is at the core of Vio 3i0, with digital intervention that takes everything to a new level.

Viology allows the trio - Viktor Haraszti (sax and electronics), Andor Horváth (bass) and Anthony Davis (drums) - to explore jazz in reality and conceptually and this debut album promises much from Vio 3i0.

The title track particularly begins as a traditional trio tune, before electronics begin to appear, weaving in and out of the sax, bass, drums lines. The use of electronics never deflects attention from the acoustic instruments and in this track particularly, they are kept back to allow each instrument space for expression. It’s not quite subtle, but it’s absolutely intuitive.

In the somewhat ironic The Disappearing Real, the trio explores space as the music. Drums begin with electronic touches, before the bass gently steps up to act as a counterpoint to Haraszti’s ethereal keyboards. There’s a particular resonance between the bass and drums as they sit alongside and and within the keyboard improvisations, almost grounding the track in the ‘real’ world. When a more traditional trio section allows Haraszti’s sax to shine, he uses electronics to alter the sound of his horn, once more challenging that sense of what is real.

Viology is neither easy-listening nor smooth jazz, but it’s exciting, bringing together the real and the electronic in a way that seems to be particularly fitting in the world we are all inhabiting in the summer of 2025.