Trio A G S (or just AGS if you prefer) consists of Gloria Damijan – toy pianos, percussion, objects; Alex Kranabetter – trumpet, electronics; Scott L. Miller – Kyma, networking. If you're wondering what "Kyma" is, suffice to say that it's "a recombinant sound design environment that puts vast libraries of unique audio synthesis and processing modules at your fingertips, where you can combine them to quickly create fresh, original sounds that can’t be found anywhere else…" or so the official website answer goes, which means it could sound like anything software can do, so although that's not much of a specific answer, it will have to do. 'Lab Rat' was born out of a live performance at Alte Schmiede, Vienna (once a blacksmith’s forge, this historic house is now a bookstore/café hosting readings & events) in December, 2021, and this trio was specifically formed for that event. The concert was followed by a recording session a few days afterwards, and the result is 'Lab Rat.' Gloria Damijan and Scott L. Miller are members of Dilate Ensemble, an audio-visual collective that often performs their work telematically (using Netty/Zoom/OBS) connecting live over great distances. A couple of tracks on this album were recorded telematically as well in November, 2021.

To some extent it helps to consider the instrumentation in this avant garde experimental project. Trumpet and toy piano are easy to describe and define; the rest, not so much. Track titles are mostly combinations of numbers and letters (the exception being the title track #4, 'LABRAT') so I'll just refer to them by the track number. There are only 6 tracks and the whole thing takes approximately 47 minutes. #1 begins primarily with electronic drone and light noise before the droning trumpet comes in followed by toy piano. You get some interesting odd sounds throughout, such as what sounds like crumpled paper, synth farts, feedbacky electrodrone and more. Toy piano is quite active in this piece. #2 begins with a tinkling electronic fantasia and the trumpet sounds like Miles warming up. Lots of random sample & hold on the electronics, and even the toy piano is going nuts. There's a point in this where it sounds like someone is shaking spray paint containers (probably isn't) but the only graffiti is sonic. Discriminating noise enthusiasts will probably love track #3 as there is an abundance of interesting noises at play, but it's a much more sonically diverse piece than just noise.

It sounds like trumpet vs. geiger counter at first on #4, but the noise get compressed, contorted and squirted through some sonic tubing before coming to a conclusion. Trumpet and toy piano duke it out for dominance but they're hesitant to go all in. Funny how the trumpet elicits an emotional repsonse but the toy piano seems aloof. Shuffling that sounds like water; found foley sounds and percussion; lots of activity, no resolution. The ambience in #5 is somewhat distant at first, but actually turns out to be one of the more sonically diverse pieces on the album. I'm getting a real musique concrète vibe here, and some of it didn't sound too distant from vintage video game sound effects. #6 starts with a sort of moaning, trumpet and other instruments (possible voice in there somewhere?) but turns into this chaotic juggernaut of sounds for a while, creatively cacophonous utilizing some of the techniques heard in previous pieces. It has a cool buzzy ending too, reminiscent of ground hum of electric instruments (such as guitar) left on but not played onstage after a performance. In spite of the rather revolting (or bizarrely cool) album cover, this is an excellent experimental avant garde improvisational album that is likely to appeal to noise enthusiasts as well.