Teen Prime have about as much claim as anyone to the title of greatest rock band in the world. The duo of Sebastian Fäth on guitar and Jörg A. Schneider on drums play what’s easiest to describe as a kind of math rock without the aimless noodling or algebraic excess, always driving at something as their sound is rippled and laced with strains of Americana or primitivism, free jazz or free improvisation in the vein of English guitarists like Derek Bailey and Fred Frith more than say the bluesy attack of Sonny Sharrock, post punk and post rock whether for their angular riffs, their embrace of dubby rhythms and motorik beats or their focus on timbre and texture and no wave in its various guises, from drone to minimalism to noise.
Yet all the while as they cross the spectrum like a slender Rubicon – with the strident dynamism of say Mick Jones and Paul Simonen zig-zagging across the stage as part of The Clash, blurring the borders of genre like a guitar string once struck by a plectrum – stretching between free jazz and the more angular margins of alternative rock, Teen Prime still manage to evince a rowdy and scuzzy essence which pits them as much the successors of garage rock bands from the Fugs to the Velvet Underground or slacker rock outfits from Pavement and beyond.
That’s to say that Teen Prime seem to encompass a long history of rock music in just their two persons. And they are prolific to boot, with their latest album no. 11 in fact their twelfth project since their formation in 2022, following up in somewhat jumbled fashion on the non-numbered Let’s Just Werewolf Them where the duo were joined by Yvonne Nussbaum on piano and no. 6 a split album with kindred spirits Disonancia Expansiva made for Teen Prime’s ongoing tour of Spain.
Schneider has had an especially extensive career. Formerly a member of the noise rock group Les Hommes Qui Wear Espandrillos and the bands Jealousy Mountain Duo and Glimmen, who mixed together minimalist jazz and math rock sometimes with ambient electronics, he has also engaged in a series of duets with the guitarists Thomas Kranefeld, Aidan Baker, Michel Kristof, Dirk Serries and thisquietarmy, the bassists Gonçalo Almeida and Tatsu Aoki and the saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi while he collaborated with the freeform duo Drazek Fuscaldo on a couple of releases last year.
Playing together with Fäth, their sheer noisiness reminds me of the cult blowout Katyusha with Martín Escalante on saxophone, Teté Leguía on the bass guitar and Walter Weasel on drums or perhaps last year’s husky and pummelling Exhaust by the saxophonist Camila Nebbia, the drummer Andrew Lisle and the pianist Kit Downes only Schneider’s tone behind the drum kit tends to be a little drier, a crisp plunk rather than a moist splunk to counter the jagged array of Fäth’s guitar. Unlike some of their peers Teen Prime also seem to wear their musical proficiency lightly, managing to harness a playful quality with one of their assorted lowercase song titles – ‘aim low club tree house meeting’ from no. 7, a track nestled between ‘pockets of reason’ and ‘the damon che jazz’ at the start of side two – seeming to encapsulate something of their ethos or preferred surrounds.
no. 11 is thus both typical fare and one of the duo’s most engaging projects to date. Over rattlestick percussion which gathers such a head of steam that it pulses and spouts like a fountain geyser, Fäth’s guitar on the lengthy opener ‘this one’s for you and you know it’ shimmers with the aspect of eighties Sonic Youth on albums like Sister and Daydream Nation, a comparison only burnished by the snatches of vocals whose declamatory tone calls to mind at least in this context the short reverb of Kim Gordon on such iconic tracks as ‘Schizophrenia’ and ‘The Sprawl’. Here though instead of native screeds and skull-splitting prophecies those vocal snippets which Teen Prime feature on no. 11 sound like voice messages, self-help guides or televangelism as one voice for instance encourages the listener ‘try to keep an open mind’ while remaining buried well within the prickly thicket of the mix.
The lurching funk of ‘goddamn it, jessie’ gives way to staggered and reeling peals of guitar, on a song which suggests a certain sun-blindness whether it stems from those too-bright early morning rays, dazzling the still groggy just-out-of-bedder or else comes in streaks which slip as if without warning through one’s snow goggles or sun visor. ‘he was last seen climbing mount ego’ is a scuzzy screed, with loping beats and a guitar loop whose circuitous revving sounds like someone trying to get a stalling all-terrain vehicle up the side of a loose ditch or gravelly embankment, while ‘hey there, sailor’ is a lighter piece, foregrounding cymbals and snares as Fäth’s short and angular, slantwise phrases call to mind the idiosyncratic work of the avant-garde jazz guitarist Mary Halvorson.
‘your library of stories’ is springier, its percussive characteristics comprising what sounds like a bit of submerged güiro ratcheting, with some guitar pulls also adding moments of pinging emphasis. Then a few piano keys uneasily crest the close of the composition, with a tender and lulling air as though the notes of a hand-cranked music box were beginning to stutter and whir, the instrument’s mechanism almost spent. Even where their songs lack an overt narrative bent which might be discerned either musically or by aid of a telling title, the scene and its emotional baggage more burrowed or dusty or complex, Teen Prime’s music seems fundamentally a storytelling medium beyond its abundance of compelling textures or sheer instrumental prowess.
More remarkable then that as with some of Teen Prime’s past projects, the parts for no. 11 were apparently recorded separately, with Fäth’s guitar captured at Total Answer in Berlin and at his home between July and December of 2024, the piano and organ keys caught at Castle Kilver that October and Schneider’s drums registered at the Laundry Room Studio in Hückelhoven in March of 2025 with Peter Körfer swiftly assisting the percussionist in mixing and mastering the combined results.
‘buttes-chaumont, paris’ suggests a verdant parkland milieu but its first peal of guitar immediately conjures the Beach Boys and surf rock with its hearty clangour and frothy spume. The duo manage to maintain this kind of register, with Fäth almost playing Ayleresque trumpet fanfares at the midpoint of the composition, as his guitar sustains its lofty pitch. Then ‘all about bangs’ proves a stomping, upbeat and ebullient close, at last almost congealing into one droning and shredding, steaming and splintering, rippling but valedictory final note.
