Eli Keszler
Intricate, micro-rhythmic percussion that feels like a clock being taken apart in a quiet room. High-definition acoustic textures for deep focus and urban solitude.
Intricate, micro-rhythmic percussion that feels like a clock being taken apart in a quiet room. High-definition acoustic textures for deep focus and urban solitude.
Listening to Eli Keszler feels like witnessing a high-speed architectural drawing being sketched in real-time. His music is defined by a hyper-articulate drumming style that favors ghost notes, metallic pings, and micro-rhythms over traditional backbeats. It is incredibly detailed, often sounding like a swarm of mechanical insects or the inner workings of a luxury timepiece, yet it maintains a spacious, airy quality that prevents it from feeling cluttered.
What sets Keszler apart is his background as a visual artist and sound installationist. He doesn't just play the drums; he activates the space around them. By incorporating long piano wires, mechanical strikers, and field recordings of city life, he creates a bridge between avant-garde jazz and industrial sound art. The result is a sound that is both organic and synthetic, capturing the restless energy of New York City in a way that feels sophisticated and deeply intentional.
Start with 'Icons' or 'Stadium' to hear how he blends these frantic percussive elements with lush, cinematic electronics. It is the perfect soundtrack for moments that require a high level of cognitive engagement or for those late-night walks where the city feels like a giant, breathing machine. It is music for people who find beauty in the precision of a blueprint and the resonance of a single struck piece of metal.
Eli Keszler is an American percussionist, composer, and visual artist based in New York City. Known for his complex and intricate style of drumming, as well creating sound installations involving piano wire and other mechanisms to accompany his live performances, his shows have involved visual elements such as Keszler's drawings, diagrams, screen prints, and writings. In 2012, Pitchfork wrote that "Keszler deserves recent attention for his large-scale sound art installations, which not only force musical ideas to interact with an acoustic environment but, in turn, for flesh-and-bone musicians to interact with both of them." Keszler has also toured or collaborated with artists such as Tony Conrad, Jandek, Loren Connors, the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and Oneohtrix Point Never, and has released several solo albums since 2008. He has also performed and released music as Pedagogy, with producer Nate Boyce. Alps in 2014, was a collaboration with guitarist Oren Ambarchi. In 2012 Keszler debuted a sound installation project where he mounted wires up to 800 feet long off the Manhattan Bridge. He has had exhibitions of his visual work, installations and performances at museums and galleries such as the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Kitchen, South London Gallery, LUMA Foundation, Tectonics Festival in Reykjavík, Centraal Museum in Utrecht, and Boston Center for the Arts. He and David Grubbs recently debuted a piece at the MIT List Center.
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