Good Fuck - Good Fuck (2019)

Tim Kinsella and Jenny Pulse have consummated their love on disc. The result is Good Fuck, an erotic exploration of experimental literary techniques and adventurous electronic beats.


Seeking an intimate creative environment to develop their musical concepts, Kinsella and Pulse journeyed deep into isolation. “We packed the car and drove 13 hours to The Millay Colony in upstate New York: an artist’s colony in The Berkshires, miles down a private road, next to 100,000 acres of national forest,” Kinsella shares.

On arrival, the couple devised a unique artistic process to work from, Kinsella describes it as a “collaborative conscious alignment.” The most unique aspect of this creative method involves the writing of the album’s lyrics. “We agreed on 12 books we thought most relevant and came up with various systems to collapse and collage them into each other in different combinations,” Kinsella says. That list included titles ranging from Don Quixote to The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. Drawing from this source material, Kinsella and Pulse employed a sort-of literary mash-up, scrambling content and structure into a thoroughly new product. “We might take the form of an Eskimo genesis myth, but use words from Anaïs Nin,” Kinsella explains.

There’s audible chemistry in Good Fuck’s sound; Kinsella’s extensive history in genre-pushing rock and roll (Joan of Arc, Cap’n Jazz) is strikingly complimented by Pulse’s fresh ear for minimalist electro sounds. Kinsella and Pulse achieved complete artistic symbiosis in composing Good Fuck’s music. “To a large degree we don't even know who programmed what beat, and who programmed what synth line,” Kinsella reflects.

Kinsella says he and Pulse were “stunned” by the results of their collaboration, but their process wasn’t perfect. “Of course there were snags, technological and psychological. And of course we threw a good amount away. But what was left was not the result of trying to write songs, but the effortless evidence of what emerged when we got clear in our intentions and then just let it out,” Kinsella recalls.

But listeners won’t notice Kinsella’s perceived imperfections, the album’s eerie synth soundscapes and chanted vocals flow effortlessly from track to track. The music of Good Fuck melds the sensual with the cryptic, the erotic with the esoteric. Good Fuck reminds us that experimental music doesn’t necessarily need to be caustic or harsh, it can exist comfortably in the groove of a seductive electronic beat.