Merry Peers is the Berlin-based duo of American trumpeter and electronics player Brad Henkel and synth player and vocalist Yoshiko Klein (who is also a flutist in trio Kaze). Genuine Pretension is the second studio album of this duo, following the debut, self-titled album (Slip, 2019), recorded in February 2024 by Henkel.
Henkel and Klein describe their music as channeling «sensual ambience, haptic glitch, and time-smudging melodic flights» into earthquake drones that trigger in their turn a «faint ringing in your ear».
Genuine Pretension is a 36-minute layered, kaleidoscopic, and fast-shifting piece, juggling constantly between eccentric, art pop songs, fragmented, dance-like pulses and beats, Nils Petter Molvær-tinged atmospheric jazz, experimental electronica, noise, and melancholic, ambient soundscapes.
It sounds at first like a detached, ironic perspective on pop and dance cultures, but as this piece progresses, it gravitates into the duo’s distinct ambience of rich yet disorienting, dreamy kind of «earthquaque drones», offering many other, seductive and imaginative sonic ideas. It ends with a sensual, synth-pop song, multiplying and processing Klein’s voice.
Eyal Hareuveni
Brad Henkel (trumpet, electronics), Yoshiko Klein (synthesizer, voice)
