On Sundays I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening from the week prior — things I would later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.
▰ Jeannine Schulz has an approach to releasing music that I’m still wrapping my head around, a mix of singles and albums and EPs that mark her as prolific but are also so understated that they feel less like a torrent and more like a steady trickle. A note at the end of the release page on Bandcamp reads: “Please make sure you download the music after the purchase as the musical content of the site sometimes changes. Tracks or albums are occasionally removed from the catalog.” Her latest, two tracks under the title All Is Found, is absolutely perfect for this mode, as it sounds like music being erased as it is being recorded. Schulz is based in Germany.
▰ I am a sucker for works in progress. I probably listen to more half-finished music than to mastered commercial releases. This video is an early-stages work (turn up the volume, as it’s quiet), a “a realtime performance processor and synthesizer” currently under development, using two Monome-made devices, the Grid and the Arc. It’s by Element433 (aka Pere Villez), based in Brighton and Hove, U.K.
▰ Archival listen: Enemy — actually all caps, ENEMY, apparently — is a trio consisting of Kit Downes, piano; Petter Eldh, double bass; and James Maddren, drums. I’ve been getting deep into Downes since hearing him on Breaking the Shell (my favorite album 2024), the trio record he recorded (playing organ, not piano) with electric guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Andrew Cyrille. I like a lot of the Enemy album The Betrayal, in particular the first track, which does this thing Robert Glasper, among others, does, where the piano sounds as if it had been sampled, the way the lines are fragmented and repeat little snippets frequently. The idea of a pianist simulating the sound of a seam in an audio loop makes me ecstatically happy. This is “post-MPC jazz” (the MPC being the sampling instrument made by Akai). Downes appears to split his time between London, England, and Berlin, Germany.
