Listening Tip June 2026: “Superimpositions”

Tizia Zimmermann and Chris Pitsiokos

Eleatic Records, September 2025

I feel as if something in me had been waiting for this CD. It had been sitting innocently enough on the pile of discs I still had to listen to, but even there it already felt a bit cheeky. I put it on without much expectation and start peeling carrots. (I love cooking while listening to music.) And the music sounds good. Tizia Zimmermann’s accordion and Pitsiokos’ saxophone create a very particular atmosphere: purely acoustic, yet so refined and unusual that I immediately get drawn in.

But after a short while, something feels off. I check my new CD player, which I am quite proud of: surely it can’t be skipping? No, it runs perfectly smoothly. Strange. I go back to my potatoes, but hardly have I started cutting when it skips again, and I get irritated, because I like the music so much and just want to enjoy it. Yet when I stand right in front of the device, the player is running calmly and contentedly.

I become suspicious. Instead of the potatoes, I now take the CD in my hand: cool cover, relaxed layout. No unnecessary information. Superimpositions. I have to look it up: it means overlays. Aha. And the track titles: Phasing, Cluster Plus One, Short Glissandi… Now I’m intrigued and notice: all ten pieces are exactly the same length, 3:58 minutes. My CD player is skipping again. No, it isn’t skipping at all.

There is simply no silence between the pieces. These are states placed next to each other. Always the same picture frame, with a different sonic image inside it. I am delighted. Here are musicians who do not simply place beautiful music on the record player, but radically challenge the medium of recording itself. It is sharply conceived, constructed, and yet still feels unconventional and punk-like. And here we can beautifully experience that form is not packaging, but something that can open the very essence of music.

The album is clearly defined and functionally structured, intelligent and mischievous in its simplicity. At the same time, the musicians fully open themselves to their playing and their resonant worlds. It does not feel designed, but playful and daring. They weave complex sonic situations together with remarkable listening awareness. Tizia Zimmermann and Chris Pitsiokos play with joy and openness. At times they seem to disappear completely into the sound, but than the listener is pulled back into the present by structure and form.

A very interesting subject.

And then: the experience of time is a central, almost gripping aspect of this recording. Some pieces feel longer much longer than others. Some seem incredibly short. Yet all remain strictly at 3:58 minutes. I checked. But the effect of each sonic image is extremely different and deeply stimulating.

Brutalist sound architecture, I would call it. Noise under the microscope. Packaged sonic forms. Once they jump into your ear, there is no way to escape them. This CD is an experience. Don’t miss it. You can buy the album. The time it gives you to listen is a gift. And it is time of first-class quality, one that can even multiply itself.

https://chrispitsiokos.bandcamp.com/album/superimpositions