Last year I had Eli Keszler tipped as about the hottest new thing in experimental music that I’d come across, a percussionist very much in the Chris Corsano/Alex Neilson vein who sounds like he must have four arms and follows firmly in the tradition of drummer as an autonomous improviser. Unlike some of his elder peers in that realm, Le Quan Ninh springs to mind, rhythm is not wholly absent from his work. Although he spends as much time bowing cymbals and crotales as flailing sticks, he isn’t averse to the rock drummer connotations, often embracing them by incorporating the guitar into his percussive arsenal.
The three tracks here showcase the variety of Keszler’s playing abilities, all titled by their instrumentation. Side A consists of Solo Crotales: a long, tense, fragile buzz of high pitched mist blows slowly through the whole side, eerily quiet, keenly focused. Occasional taps of wood and metal pierce the sheets of whistling tone as they gently flap and bounce off one another. The piece is clearly an overdub free improvisation, the sustained pitches a balance of applied pressure and straightforward chance.
Side B kicks off with Drums Guitar. God only knows how Keslzer manages to find a limb to activate his guitar while his hands enact the signature epileptic clatter upon a collection of small sounding objects. Still, the guitar hums fairly consistently, possibly shaken under one foot, and occasionally plucked by a pinkie – who knows? Keszler works up a frenzy, bells skittering across drumheads, before letting things die down and coaxing them up a-jangle again, the low-end rumble of slackened strings carrying us through. The final piece, Nail Violin, is far and away the most surprising, consisting of minimal but solid subsonic waves, with only the slightest hint of anything above 300 hertz, the warm cousin to the cold crotales opener.
All-round tip-top tape, an excellent gateway to Keszler’s world, though if you want to take a deeper plunge the full lengths both on Rel and Rare Youth, as well as the duo LP Red Horse are all outstanding. Also keep an eye out for Eli playing live with Geoff Mullen – I look forward to the recorded fruit that project bears.
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