Coincidences, like rhythm, repeat themselves and often follow patterns—sometimes with the clear intent of breaking them. When, in 2017, the convergence of percussion prodigies João Pais Filipe and Valentina Magaletti gave rise to CZN, the repetition of events became inscribed in the musicians’ destinies, just as the episodes that would unfold after The Golden Path (2018). How these would develop, however, is only an echo of previous steps, modulated by the constant evolution of its players.

Commutator is a metaphor for the process that guides CZN (or copper-zinc-nickel, the metals that make up João Pais Filipe’s sound sculptures, or instruments with a visual dimension): a convergence of percussionists charting directions beyond the obvious paths by pointing out coordinates to be avoided. Obvious tempos, repeated cadences, the fixation of a rhythm and the intent to evade them—this is the material that binds Valentina Magaletti, João Pais Filipe, and Leon Marks on this record, where rhythm becomes the antithesis of dance, where the possibility of memorising gestures dissolves in the performers’ movements, and where the producer’s melodic textures dive into the timbres of the trio’s singular paraphernalia.

The result is, inevitably, the antithesis of the rule, where the rule itself is avoidance. Boredom has no place in CZN’s music; circularity enters only through cogwheels and their symbolic-symbiotic relations, through a chemistry analogous to the alloy of metals that defines the trio’s sound. In a succession of assured advances and clinical hesitations over ambient sounds, Commutator is more than just another venture for each of the musicians involved; it is a document of lasting value—eccentric, idiosyncratic, and alive.