Enigma

Listening Tip November: Enigma (Philip Zoubek Trio)

• Album: Enigma

• Artist: Philip Zoubek Trio

• Release: October 30, 2026

• Label: Boomslang Records

  
  

I heard the Philip Zoubek Trio live at the fabulous Bezau Beatz Festival . The trio consists of Philip Zoubek on piano and synthesizer (who also wrote the compositions), David Helm on double bass and effects, and Dominik Mahnig on drums,tabletop xylophone, and flute.

An electroacoustic project and one of those concerts that turns into a memorable experience. Not a single cell in me was spared. It went through me, quite literally. Sound-wise, the trio unleashed a massive force live. Compositions, yes. But compositions so charged that they explode. They detonate, fly around your ears, and allow the musicians to tear down all boundaries: in listening, seeing, feeling, and thinking.

Completely sound-drunk, I stumbled up to the stage after the concert to buy their music. The trio has been playing together since 2015 and has several outstanding records in their catalog, many released on Boomslang. I managed to get Mirage, on which the trio plays in an extended format with three additional musicians: Elisabeth Coudoux (cello),Leonhard Huhn (woodwinds), and Shiau-Shiuan Hung (vibraphone). A gorgeous record! But I desperately wanted the new one: exactly what I had just heard live.

I had to be patient, but now it is finally here: Enigma is the title of the record. And every piece is a part of this riddle.

The cover reminds me strongly of Giorgio de Chirico. It was with de Chirico's paintings that I once had my first "metaphysical continuing education." While I was a complete zero in physics at school, I discovered physics through him as that force that throws humans into a dimension in which they must survive, mercilessly even beyond death. De Chirico's world shifts spatial relationships, perspectives, shadows, and architectures; everything operates according to its own unfathomable laws. This order is intensely tangible physically, yet completely incomprehensible.

That is precisely what happens on this record. There are riddles you cannot solve, but must be lived to be understood. And it fits the music of this trio perfectly with compositions that blow themselves up and thunder into new perspectives. The ear is stretched into unsuspected dimensions, only to be oriented back to the present moment, anchored by clear and striking accents. The effect is extraordinary: you can venture far out in your listening and yet be held by a powerful structure that constantly shifts and transforms.

When I finally got the music of Enigma, I was visiting my mother. We rarely see each other, and I actually just wanted to be with her and talk about the simple things in life. But I was too curious about the music. So I spoke into her classically trained ear, asking if she felt like listening to something unusual.

“Oh well,” she said in her plain way. “We can certainly do that.”

So I put on the music and tried to adjust the volume so as not to startle the cat too much, who was curled up comfortably in my mother's lap. But you can't listen to this music with too much restraint. My mother agreed. So we turned it up a bit,because this record needs a certain volume level. And the cat? Purred and curled up even more peacefully. The apartment filled with sound and thrummed out into the outside world.

My mother listened and remarked: “Well, that is interesting.”

A little later: “But right here, it sounds like jazz.”

And finally, when things were getting quite intense again: “I like this…”

Encouraged by this, I tried to explain to her as we listened how ingeniously the sound was constructed. How insanely thrilling it was to hear each musician break through barriers with their instrument to create this thick sound that wanted to cheer inside me, ecstatic and liberating. How the drums vibrate and track down longings. How the bass carries us from the rumbling of the earth up into the spherical friction tones of Saturn's rings … And this piano that melts, rears up, and towers, only to lay a new trail right next to your ear out of nowhere. The listener becomes a tracker, scenting prey in the cryptic movements of the unfolding performance.

“Ah well, one truly always experiences something with you,” my mother finally said.

But I think that when I am 80, I would love to be like her: despite all infirmities and worldly noise, to simply sit down and still be able to listen in a completely fresh way. And yes, maybe I wish that when I am that old and no longer as present in the hustle of the world … someone will come by and play me something really wild.

Listening is about a lot of things, after all. It’s about more. Or about everything. You don’t have to understand it. You simply know it. Anyone who really listens knows it. And that’s why it’s allowed to remain a riddle.