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Eli Keszler

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Eli Keszler (LuckyMe, 2025)

Amusingly, the first Eli Keszler album that I ever heard was 2011’s Cold Pin, which was centered around a complex percussion installation that used motors and microcontrollers to attack strings and metal squares, so my expectations regarding the rest of his career were definitely quite different than the trajectory that it ultimately took (film soundtracks, a Grammy nomination, etc.). I always enjoy Keszler’s drumming, of course, but some of his chameleonic reinventions definitely appeal to me more strongly than others. This self-titled album (billed as “a freewheeling, Lynchian song-cycle”) is an especially cool one, as Keszler enlisted Stones Throw artist/DJ/electro-pop diva Sofie Royer as the vocalist for a handful of killer noir-jazz gems. The rest of the album is a bit more eclectic and varied, but some of those other directions are compelling too (and there is often some virtuosic drumming to be found as well).

The opening “Wild Wild West” is perhaps the album’s most perfect channeling of Lynchian vibes, as its sultry shuffling rhythm, breathy torch song vocals, twangy surf-noir guitars, and psychotropically buzzing synth bass instantly evoke a slow, sexy dance at Twin Peaks’ Roadhouse. There are also some cool dubby percussion touches, but they are icing on an already perfect cake, as Keszler and Royer slay on pure atmosphere alone. I wish the whole album stayed in that vein (it does not), but the closing “Drip Drip Drip” is at least an absolutely killer (if more macabre) companion piece. 

Notably, the percussion is a bit more inventive and industrial-inspired in “Drip Drip Drip,” but the best bits are generally the mood, the guitars, and Royer, which is not what I would have expected from an album by a percussionist. That said, Keszler does allow himself to go a bit wild on the kit for the piece’s second half, which illustrates a central feature of this album: unusual and unpredictable song structures. Keszler described the album’s creative arc as “I aimed to take a feeling and let the music move freely across mediums, materials, and genres,” though there is also a crucial unifying theme of “everything coated in a sheen of despair and grandeur.”

The remainder of the pieces are an eclectic mixed bag of different experiments and moods. For example, there is another excellent Royer showcase in “Speak For Me,” but it abandons Twin Peaks for an aesthetic best described as “a more libidinous Portishead.” Elsewhere, Keszler goes entirely solo with the unsettling and otherworldly “Sun,” which combines discordant submerged synths and clattering broken beat drums to form a very weird and seasick-sounding strain of futuristic dub. “Ever Shrinking World” is yet another solo banger, approximating an improbable and industrial-damaged collision of Rhythm & Sound and Bark Psychosis (and the skittering drums are quite nice as well). Keszler also channels some other cool influences with varying degrees of success, as “When I Sleep” sounds like an hot improv session between a shoegaze-inspired ambient artist and a free jazz drummer, while “Low Love” feels like blurred and hypnagogic pop à la Julee Cruise (until the machine gun drums kick in, anyway).

Part of me admittedly wishes this album was a bit less stylistically fluid and that Keszler had instead just set out to craft a hot batch of killer singles with Royer, as the two definitely locked onto a winning vision with “Wild Wild West” and “Drip Drip Drip.” I suspect that Keszler is too creatively restless to be satisfied with just composing a bunch of cool singles though, as this album is teeming with disparate other ideas that he was keen on exploring. As such, this album is best appreciated as a kind of imaginary soundtrack set in the neon-soaked world of a city in the small hours after all the wholesome people have gone home: sex, melancholy, and desperation mingled with occasional glimpses of beauty or clarity. 

Unlike traditional songs, most of these pieces abandon the expected “verse, chorus, repeat” formula to take unexpected yet cool detours, which is kind of how film soundtracks work: if the scene changes after two minutes, the score changes with it. That stylistic instability can certainly be frustrating when Keszler abandons a promising theme for something else, but it works pretty well in an album-sized dose, as there is a compelling arc here and the various interludes and jazzy flourishes keep things fresh and pleasantly unpredictable between the major highlights.

Listen here. 

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Eli Keszler, “Last Signs of Speed” (Empty Editions, 2016)

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Eli Keszler’s Cold Pin was easily one of most remarkable and inventive albums of 2011, but he has largely been working under my radar ever since, steadily releasing a flow of live recordings and small-edition vinyl-only collaborations. Consequently, I was delighted to discover that he was finally ready to unleash another solo opus. Last Signs of Speed, the inaugural release from Berlin’s Empty Editions, is inherently a bit less radical than Cold Pin, as it is sadly not built from a motorized string installation. 

That said, it may as well have been built from a motorized percussion installation instead, as Keszler’s hyper-kinetic free-jazz-inspired drumming is compellingly inhuman and unpredictable. There is also some music: the album description intriguingly references both Scientist and Iannis Xenakis as key influences, but that dub influence is a damn subtle one. Instead, Last Signs generally sounds more like Xenakis mixed with a truckload of drumsticks being fitfully poured down a long and winding flight of stairs (in the best way possible).

I tend to think of Eli Keszler primarily as an incredibly talented percussionist with a lot of bold and interesting ideas, so I sometimes forget that he is a formidable composer and multi-instrumentalist as well. In fact, most of these twelve pieces were performed entirely by Keszler himself, which goes a long way towards explaining why it was recorded in three different cities over two years. Sometimes Keszler had some talented help though, as he is occasionally joined by cellist Leila Bordreuil, percussionist Geoff Mullen, and the String Orchestra of Brooklyn. 

Unsurprisingly, the pieces featuring the string orchestra tend to be the most Xenakis-like and often the most vibrant, rich, and fully formed. That is not always the case though, as Keszler goes it alone in the wonderfully deranged opener “Sudden Laughter, Laughter Without Reason,” which sounds like a handful of sickly, out-of-phase sonar pings uncomfortably harmonizing with one another as Keszler unleashes a wildly skittering drum solo. It is a quite an impressive opening salvo. 

As for the orchestra, they make their strongest showing on “Is Stage Director,” as they work up quite a churning and cacophonous din of ugly drones as Keszler goes absolutely bananas on his kit. It is probably the strongest piece on the album just on sheer intensity alone, as Keszler is an unpredictable blur of oddly timed and insanely intricate fills. Curiously, that unhinged flurry is immediately followed by my other favorite piece (“Holes, Parts Missing”), which eschews percussive pyrotechnics altogether in favor of a quietly lurching and see-sawing rhythm of deep bowed strings.

The rest of the album is a bit more one-dimensionally percussion-focused, but there is indeed a bizarrely manifested and deeply abstract dub influence that arguably surfaces again and again in the form of woozily throbbing bass pulses. “No Iodine, No Breeze” is an especially representative example of that strain, resembling a crawling reggae groove that has been deconstructed into ghostly starkness with some eerily tinkling piano accompaniment. It is the sort of thing that would definitely drag in the wrong hands, but the wildly plinking and ricocheting percussion handily erases any danger of a lull. Also, aside from his “conventional” drumming, Keszler additionally creates a lot of unusual textural and rhythmic effects using rocks and gravel on his kit. It is quite a distinctive sound. 

Most of Last Signs of Speed is devoted to interesting variations upon similarly minimal melodic themes, such as “Breaches Breaches,” which sounds like someone tirelessly pumping away at a dying accordion. The more dramatic departures tend to occur only when other musicians are involved, such as Leila Bordreuil’s nuanced miasma of nightmarish cello drones in “The Next Day, In the Afternoon.” 

Not to be upstaged on his own album, Keszler’s percussion for that piece resembles nothing less than several overlapping and fast-paced ping-pong matches. Later, Keszler teams up with Geoff Mullen for an apparent reprise of “No Iodine, No Breeze” entitled “Willing to be Open,” which takes the album’s percussion to strange and frenzied new heights. Wielding an array of glass, metal, and wood fragments, it sounds like either the work of an insanely busy Rube Goldberg contraption or an amplified and bizarrely rhythmic hail storm.

Naturally, the problem with making an album as brilliant and inventive as Cold Pin is that there will inevitably have to be a follow-up and that it will be nearly impossible to make the same impact a second time, though Keszler did revisit Cold Pin‘s mechanized installation once more with 2012’s Catching Net. Last Signs of Speed is a different beast altogether though, veering away from installations and sound art into a kinetic tour de force performance behind the drum kit. As such, it is considerably more technique-driven than conceptually visionary, but Keszler’s technique is quite staggering on its own, as he is a skittering, clattering whirlwind. 

His talents as a composer are not quite on the same level though, so Speed probably would have been stronger as just a single LP rather than a double. The pieces are all generally quite good, but a few feel interchangeable with one another and a broodingly monochromatic mood has a tendency to make an album feel longer than it actually is. 

Minor grumbling aside, however, Last Signs of Speed is still quite a singular and inspired album. My opinion may be somewhat suspect though, as I love listening to great drummers flexing their improv skills and could probably happily listen to Keszler play for hours with no music at all. While I am sure that such a predisposition towards free-jazz drumming helps make Speed a bit more mesmerizing, it is probably not an essential prerequisite, as this is exactly the sort of album that could make someone excited about virtuosic percussionists.

Listen here.

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Eli Keszler, “Cold Pin” (PAN, 2012)

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This was easily one of the most striking and visceral albums that I encountered last year, but it has somehow remained mostly under the radar. Cold Pin is the end-product of a two-year labor of love, as Keszler leads an excellent ensemble in a very unique collaboration with a huge string installation that he built in a large dome in Boston (the Cyclorama). It’s an amazing and unusual performance, but the installation itself could probably have a very successful career as a solo artist: few things sound better than giant strings being scraped at by small motors in a cavernous room with great acoustics.

This album consists of two side-long performances, each clocking in at just under 15 minutes. That may seem brief, but it is actually the perfect length for music as texture-centered as this. The primary difference between the two pieces is that in “Cold Pin 2,” the motors percussively attack metal squares in addition to the strings. It is nearly impossible to tell which sounds are coming from the squares and which are coming from the Keszler’s wild, skittering drumming without actually being there though, as man and machine blur together quite seamlessly.

Of the two pieces, I prefer “Cold Pin 1,” simply because the creaking and scraping strings are more prominent and active.Those strings are honestly more than enough to carry the piece on their own, as the deep metallic scraping and humming is extremely engrossing and feels almost tactile. Both pieces have a rumbling, physical presence that is both massive and mesmerizing. Notably, the longest string that Keszler used is only 25 feet, which makes me wonder how shudderingly apocalyptic his previous water basin installation in Shreveport was (which used 200 ft. strings) or whether his planned future installation with 2000 ft. strings will cause an earthquake

Aside from creating an extremely cool sound installation that translates quite well into album form (a rare feat indeed), Keszler managed to also impress me as both a drummer and a composer. His drumming is nearly as prominent as the massive thrumming strings and provides a perfect counterbalance to their slow-motion immensity, as he plays very unconventionally and with a curiously muted ferocity. I have no idea what the hell he is doing or how he is doing it (I think he has some mechanical help), but he somehow manages to sound like a thousand pencils falling down a metal staircase. 

Conversely, the actual composition is about as far from busy or flashy as possible‚ as Keszler uses his talented battery of musicians both sparingly and droningly. No one ever plays anything remotely conventional or melodic. Instead, the trumpet, woodwinds, and guitars all seem to wax and wane together like a single undulating organic entity, creating a queasily brooding atmosphere rather than competing for my attention.

I could not be more impressed with this album, as Keszler and his collaborators not only do everything right, but manage to do it right in ways that I could not have anticipated. Obviously, any piece focused so intently on things like natural reverberation, decay, and the sound of metal scraping metal is going to be a pretty challenging listen, but Cold Pin is heavy and unpredictable enough to be instantly engaging. This is not austere, concept-heavy sound art: this is a vibrantly buzzing, grinding, and clattering sound world.

Listen here.