Laenz - 88 keys (2025)

A phone call with a past mentor who at age 95 is still teaching piano, a memory of giggling at her mother transfixed whilst photographing swans, a feeling of being floored whilst unearthing letters from her parents’ relationship. Exploring her most personal narratives to date, Laenz’s album ‘88 keys’ is suffused by the power of unwavering devotion - both towards others and towards lifelong study of music. Leaving behind the guilt of adolescent indignation and deviation from classical music towards fascination with leftfield dance music, the release circles back: a reverence to former piano teachers and the nurture they instilled in her.

Across ’88 keys’, loosely tethered memories and the intricate yet unpredictable sonic turns Laenz is known for are grounded through bass frequencies. On ’’11’ which samples recordings of Laenz’s last public performance of Bach’s ‘Chaconne in D minor’ arranged by Busoni, sustained solemnity is beset against misty, dubbed-out percussive explorations of piano acoustics. ’’24’ reminisces on lazy walks by Berlin canals, basslines ebbing hazily below spiralling hi-hats and caliginous melodies. ’9-30-91’ delicately re-casts one of the many love letters written by her father to her mother when they began dating, into a sonically distinct, tenderly stripped back vocal track. The lyrics read: ‘My dear, I miss you so much, I miss you deeply, from the bottom of my heart. Thoughts of you, occupy my whole heart, and every corner of my mind’.

Conversations, past performances, and archival recordings are run through iterations of radio transmission-reception, audio becoming irreversibly lost or altered into ambiguity. Each titled after a year, though not emotionally bound to it, the tracks are an aggregate of Laenz’s desire to calibrate them actively in her current memory—resisting any inevitable, obsolescent effects of time’s passing. In Laenz’s words ’88 keys’ ‘though a fraction of the appreciation I have for my parents, Carolyn Shaak, and Larry Graham, this project was from start to finish an ode to their impact’.

Laenz is a producer based in Brooklyn, NY, working within radiophonic textures and caliginous dance music. Her work explores the sonification of indeterminate spaces, saturating abstract musical forms with intensely tender and personal observations. She uses vocals, radio equipment, and live processing in her performances, sonifying unknowable sounds into unsuspecting ears. She holds a Lot residency, and has released projects under Woozy, Early Reflex, Dance Data, and more.