by
Juno Daily
on 06.05.2025 at 14:21pm.
Last edited: 06.05.2025 at 14:21pm.
New York city rhythm
New York percussionist and composer Eli Keszler is best known for teaming up with the likes of Oneophtrixpointnever and filmmaker Adam Curtis, but on his eponymous solo album – his tenth – American abstraction, jazz noir, ancient melodic memory and crumbling industrial forms join forces to create a footworking meditation on beauty and erosion.
We love it. So we put a few question to the man himself to get the full story.
Hi and thanks for your time…. First of all, can you tell us where you are right now, and what kind of day you’re having… Been anywhere already or going anywhere interesting later?My pleasure. I’m actually at the gym right now, on an exercise bike — it’s really early. The day’s been okay so far. I woke up very early, still half in a strange, cloudy dream. There’s a kind of brimming intensity in the air… but yes, I’m feeling good.
Give us a quick run down of your musical upbringing – parental/sibling tastes and your first musical loves, first steps into music making, embarrassing teenage bands etcMy mother was a professional dancer — ballet and modern — and taught at Boston University. My father was wonderful musician; he plays guitar, violin, and piano. I grew up playing surf instrumentals with him, and listening to him play Celtic music with his friends, he played fiddle. Would practice Villa-Lobos on guitar. Our house was filled with music — Brazilian stuff he discovered while in the Peace Corps, jazz, pre-war blues… really, everything. There were tons of half working instruments just lying around, which I’d check out. I got into jazz and classical music in high school, and the rest is kind of history.
Congratulations on your solo album… After the many collaborations you’ve done, how was it being the sole proprietor?Thank you. I’ve actually made quite a few solo records — I think I’m over ten now — but yes, it feels good being the ‘sole proprietor’.
Where was it made and did that have an effect? What influences – musical, environmental, whatever etc – shaped its sound? What tracks came first and which last?The album was made in my East Village studio, where I’ve been working for almost ten years. My environment always affects me — Manhattan is where I do my best writing it seems. Even with the kind of flatness to the place that’s crept in, the intense LED lighting, sterility of some of the people, all that — there’s still steam rising from the streets, shadowy alleyways, shafts of crystalline New York light, strange and beautiful people. It’s exciting and continues to surprise me in new ways.
I track at The Bunker Studio with my engineer Nolan Thies — that’s become a second cocoon for me. We’ve built a whole lexicon and way of working I find continually rewarding.
Your music is often linked with film and/or visual art. Is it a very different discipline to make music that will stand alone?It is different, of course — but also, not really. In the end, all art forms are just containers for meaning, feeling, sensation. The materials change, but the impulse is the same. It’s about staying present, listening deeply, and shaping whatever medium you’re working in or within. Everything else is surface and illusion. Once you understand the surface and the illusion you are after it becomes a quite fluid and intuitive process
“A genderless character started to take shape — contemporary and familiar, appearing in various forms across culture” – explain…I started writing from both male and female perspectives — and at some point, those began to blur. I don’t even really think of the voices — mine or Sophie’s — as belonging strictly to us, they are a character, a mask. They’re smeared out. Everything became cloudy and spectral. I guess I think if our era were a paint, it’d be gouache — or more like enamel: toxic and smeared with turpentine, bubbling and unstable.
Likewise, ‘nocturnal’ and ‘romantic’ are two other words linked to the album, how do these manifest themselves???
I think it’s better not to over-explain these things. But yes — the album is deeply romantic, and built on a dark palette, emotionally and sonically. You can feel it — it’s in the tones, the pacing, the echoes. It’s not just about love or darkness in the classic sense, but more about the atmosphere those things create when they’re woven together. Darkness and light are equally rich and are deeply interconnected to me.
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