How could I pass on this album? It has a wildly enigmatic title with a horror movie vibe. (I’ll bet you didn’t know “werewolf” could be used as a verb.) And it has Jörg A. Schneider on drums.
I first discovered Jörg Schneider through the band Roji, a duo with bassist Gonçalo Almeida. Their first album The Hundred Headed Women is a favorite of mine, as is the follow-up Oni. Their music lives somewhere in the intersection of harsh noise, thumping metal and improvised music. It’s a pretty great intersection.
Schneider seems to especially enjoy duos with guitarists. There’s his 2025 album This Ain’t My First Rodeo, Pal! with Michel Kristof, the project The Nude Spur with Thomas Kranefeld and his pair of albums with Dirk Serries, Schneider-Serries I & II. The Schneider-Serries albums in particular are year-end list calibre good.
But perhaps his most significant drum-guitar duo is his ongoing project with Sebastian Fäth, called Teen Prime. They have 10 releases, helpfully numbered 1 through 10. Listening to some random tracks off their bandcamp page, I hear fine examples of the great variety of music that can be made with this simple combination of instruments. At times, I hear Derek Bailey in one of his many duos with drummers. Then maybe a Gang Of Four riff. Then maybe a bit of Steve Reich’s Electric Guitar Phase.
That brings us to Let’s Just Werewolf Them. Jörg and Sebastian had recorded what was intended to be a Teen Prime album. But they realized that what they had produced was a “more intimate, low-key gathering” than a typical Teen Prime recording. So they invited Yvonne Nussbaum, who had previously worked with Jörg on the projects Skim and Wolfskull, to overdub her piano playing. It was a great decision.
The track “a single life in a single body” is beautiful. Schneider’s drumming skitters in the background while Fäth’s guitar style is almost ambient. Nussbaum’s pensive and plaintive piano feels like the completion of a thought. On the final track “as for parameter”, Fäth’s guitar starts off repeating a simple, minimalist riff which he then builds up in complexity and intensity, with Schneider matching him along the way. Nussbaum’s peaceful piano is keeping the listener grounded, until eventually the album ends on her playing a final few quiet notes.
The whole album contains depths I am still finding. Highly recommended.
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