Google can’t introduce you to Keenan Ruffin or Stan Zenkov. ChatGPT will guess their biographical details with trademark confidence and trademark lack of accuracy. These two improvisers operate beyond the reach of data-driven detectives and AI assistants. The only way of getting to know their artistic personalities is to listen to their music. There’s rich reward for that sonic study.
Ruffin is a guitarist and Zenkov plays reed instruments. Both perform frequently in Brooklyn. This four-track album, released in November 2025, captures a 45-minute session from October 2024. The protagonists pass moods and motifs around the studio, while Ruffin explores his pedals and Zenkov cycles through clarinets and saxophones. Two distinct identities emerge in sharp focus.
The prevailing character of the record is affable, welcoming and generous. Ruffin often constructs arpeggio-adjacent shapes like ladders for his listeners to climb, using extended effects to add warmth rather than discord or discomfort. In the early stages of the title track, he picks notes like water droplets. Later, he stifles his strings to produce a sound like a windchime.
Zenkov is more excitable and energetic but successfully avoids crowding out his colleague or overwhelming his audience. The shortest piece,“1000 Armed Massage”, has a tentative and peering-around-corners feel. It features a balladeering central section, where the bass clarinet’s plummy voice hums a melodic line as if embarrassed to have forgotten the lyrics.
The third track, “Turn the Wheel”, stands out for its spookier spirit. It’s the album’s most industrialized district. Something is rotating behind the initial exchanges. Zenkov plays more hectic material, while Ruffin deploys his pedals and switches with more pugnacity. It’s a nervy, threatening piece that suggests a cornered animal with titanium teeth bared and rusty claws unsheathed.
In today’s age of intrusive tech tools and aggressive data scraping, it’s impressive that Keenan Ruffin and Stan Zenkov have maintained such a low digital profile—but faintly regrettable too. These are two disarming and benevolent improvisers who share their unpretentious, open-hearted music with the world on The Mechanics of Getting Anywhere. Listeners get rich reward for time spent with this record. But don’t tell the robots.
The album is available on cassette and as a digital download here .
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