Teen Prime
"No. 8"
You could call it jazz, you could call it noise, you could say it rocks. You’d be right.
Reviewed February 11, 2024
Berlin-based jazz-rock duo Teen Prime have been putting out albums at a high clip since they started in 2022. Their most recent, aptly titled No. 8, is their eighth release in just over two years. While such a prolific output is impressive, the notable caveat is that each of these releases is an improvised set of similarly chaotic noise. That isn’t meant to be denigrating at all – Teen Prime easily fall into the noise rock genre, where dissonance takes the place of melody and subtle patterns step in for identifiable rhythm. But they’re also very clearly jazz (Bitches Brew, not Kind of Blue). But what sets Teen Prime even further apart from noise rock or jazz is that they’re still very clearly rock.
With a rock-standard lineup of guitars and drums, these two operate within the same tonal vicinity as by-the-numbers rock duos like White Stripes or Japandroids, by which I mean distorted guitar and hard-hitting drums. Within the first few seconds of No. 8’s opener “Kind Heart, Kid,” though, it’s clear that there’s nothing by the numbers about this band: there is no traditional cohesion to either instrument’s playing, Rather, these instruments cohere through a commitment to dynamics: all the way up. If this is rock music, it’s rock at its most fully unleashed. The closest analog I’ve heard is Birds-era Collections of Colonies of Bees, but Teen Prime take their refusal of tradition a step further.
Most noise-rock gives ecstatically into its fetish for feedback and delay-induced squalls, but Teen Prime develops its dissonance organically, actually playing the notes in real time. There are some apparent overdubs or effects (most audible in “Mr. Hissy Fits” and “I Would have Beaten Odysseus for You”), while the drums turn any potential regularity of the guitarwork into chopped up mystery. It’s active and busy and pummeling, but the overall effect is one of sublime disassociation. Almost immediately, Teen Prime is able to divert listeners’ attention away from our conditioned expectations and toward the new aural discoveries.
You could call it jazz, you could call it noise, you could say it rocks. You’d be right. Given the rapid output Teen Prime has shown over the last two years, this may be a lightning-in-a-bottle moment, or it may be the beginning of a long, bright burn. Either way, I’m glad they’ve taken steps to get these inspired sessions on record.
