Tracked during a cold Berlin January in 2024, this first meeting of Jordan Topiel Paul (snare drum) and Bryan Eubanks (synth) finally sees life two years later. What seems to be an inauspicious instrumental pairing soon reveals itself to be anything but on Pushovers. The interplay between Paul and Eubanks approaches psychic levels. Their unified interest in certain textural inflections makes it difficult to discern where one’s contributions end and the other’s begin. The close alignment of Paul’s all-acoustic setup and Eubanks’ direct-input electronics is a testament to how well-recorded the session is: careful mic placement ensures the former’s precise hits and jumps across the stereo field are just as clear and agile as the latter’s gain swells and whip-panning. I also can’t tell (thanks to my woeful ignorance of modular workings, no doubt) whether Eubanks is processing the snare live or simply using patches that sound percussive. Either way, it’s an alluring dynamic that more often comprises mutual construction rather than response, with both improvisors embracing a classical ratatat-tat ethos, so to speak. The inclinations toward persistent but elastic repetition reminds me of French duo Phanes, whose self-titled release I reviewed several years ago. I also love the moments when Paul sets down the sticks and instead rides the strainer, setting the wires in flux between their two primary tensile states, a blurring of a boundary that’s crucial to extended snare exploration canonized by Murayama and others. The duo shows signs of running out of steam toward the end of the lengthy “Boletus / En polvo,” but they stick the landing with the more concise “Toffee / Muroidea.”
Noise Not Music 