t’s rather a surprise to learn that this collaboration between Australian jazz trio Triosk and German loop wizard Jan Jelinek was not the result of a live, in-person meeting between the four musicians. Rather, Jelinek sent the band raw materials, they played and recorded based around these samples and ideas, and then sent the results back to Jelinek for further production and editing. That the result is 1+3+1, an album of intense, emotional, and vibrant electronic jazz that seems to nearly burst from the speakers even when it’s at its most sedate, says a lot about how invested these musicians all must have been in this project.

Because of this collaborative environment, the music on 1+3+1 never has the characteristic quietness and subtlety of Jelinek’s solo albums. There’s always much more surface tension in this music than in Jelinek’s nostalgic explorations of old vinyl loops, where the tension was often submerged within the calm exteriors. Here, the kinetic double bass of Ben Waples and the driving rhythms of drummer Laurence Pike periodically cut out of Jelinek’s lulling, speaker-shifting drones. The rhythm section is joined by pianist Adrian Klumpes, who largely holds back more often than his colleagues but can be truly blistering when throwing his thick clumps of notes headlong into the already chaotic mix.

This is not to say that Triosk dominates the process, even though their name does come first on the record sleeve. Jelinek’s contributions seem to be organically shaping the music at every turn, gently nudging his collaborators’ music through the rich soup of looped static and warm noise that each track builds upon. “Track 2” (which is actually, for some reason, track three) is the best example of the collaboration at work. The three musicians of Triosk each get their turn shaping the music, with various solo turns seeming to fade up naturally from out of the ether. But Jelinek’s reverberating back-and-forth loops provide the ultimate structure; sometimes they’re hidden beneath a fiery jazz jam, sometimes they take the lead with only a tentative bass line plucked out below, but they’re always there guiding everything.

“Vibes/Pulse” is another fine track, which builds slowly from an ethereal haze where gentle piano and a muted beat merge almost imperceptibly with Jelinek’s fuzzy loops. The song’s build-up goes almost unnoticed over much of its five-and-a-half-minute length, until it fades back into the wet nothingness from which it arose. On “Neckless,” the song has a weird, irresistible drive that seems to be simultaneously held back and pushed forward by the panting wave-like flutter of Jelinek’s contributions. The complex rhythm gathers ever more momentum as it chugs along, pounding along to outrace the slow-but-steady pursuit of Triosk’s collaborator; it’s an exhilarating effect, and when it cuts short at the end into a steady repeating tone, the sudden stop leaves you completely in the lurch. “Mis-Leader” provides the perfect opener, sounding like the electronic version of a jazz band warming up. Periodic spurts of glimmering activity contrast with Waples’ patient bass plucking and the subtle click and sputter of Jelinek’s buzzing vinyl.

The album also features a number of more low-key moments that are more in line with Jelinek’s past work, though these quieter moments are no less lovely. On “Munmorah,” the band seems to be confining themselves to working completely within Jelinek’s idiom (or maybe Jelinek just manipulated Triosk’s music more on this track?), and the result is a smooth and sexy bit of lite-jazz. The slithery drums blend perfectly into Jelinek’s loops, and the piano takes off on occasional flights of giddy fancy, but mostly also works within the structure of the loops.

This is dense, rich music that is both a very natural extension of Jan Jelinek’s previous work, but a beautiful exploration of organically combining jazz structures and compositions into a totally electronic framework. The balance of musical minds here is impressive, and the project retains its coherence while pushing into unrelentingly adventurous territory.