Prepare Thyself’s debut, Void Jazz, doesn’t attempt to dazzle with traditional jazz chops. It aims for something deeper, stranger, and more personal.
The album’s name is both a wink and a warning: this is a record more concerned with atmosphere than virtuosity, more groove than grit, more spiritual than showy.
Built from a fusion of psych rock and spiritual jazz, Void Jazz is textured and exploratory, shaped by the collaborative chemistry between Andrew Kruske (Chameleon Treat) and drummer Eli Weidman (of LT Creacher and Ames Harding & the Mirage). The two first bonded while working in a bakery, spinning obscure Afrobeat and MPB records in the early morning hours. That sense of shared musical curiosity permeates the album.
Inspired in part by a reissue of Malombo Jazz Makers’ Down Lucky’s Way, Kruske took to late-night improvisations with jazz records, not to solo, but to add something subtle and meditative. Those repetitions became the skeletons of songs that evolved over months, guided more by feel than formula. “Not every album has to be Giant Steps,” Kruske notes in the extensive Bandcamp liner notes, and Void Jazz thrives in the space between simplicity and depth.
Eli’s dynamic drumming is the gravitational center. His first takes often made it to the final cut, lending the record a raw spontaneity. From those rhythmic blueprints, Kruske built outward, layering textures, tweaking passages, and reworking structures until each track felt like its own little world.
The opener, “Atoms, Nothing Else,” thrums with an ancient yearning, as if the void doesn’t just stare back, but floods you with light, overwhelming and serene. “Ghost Particle” pulses with sci-fi mysticism, blending glitched-out electronics with Caribbean polyrhythms that flicker like signal fire in a jungle from another dimension.
“Wormholes in Fiction” slips through dreamlike corridors, where dusty vinyl crackle meets chopped, warping guitar lines. Imagine Massive Attack reinterpreted through an acid house lens.
On “Orbital Decay,” the duo tunnels deeper into their private cosmos, erupting into a jagged noise-rock churn that is equal parts collapse and propulsion. Closer “Spirits of the Prism” channels a post-rock grandeur, building a wall of sound that surges and fractures beneath Eli’s frenetic, free-form drumming.
Though rooted in jazz influences—think Pharoah Sanders, Don Cherry, Alice Coltrane—the final result drifts closer to a psych-rock-leaning soundscape, loose and luminous, with echoes of modal jazz, global folk, and experimental minimalism. It’s music as conversation, improvised and intimate.
And like the void it invokes, Void Jazz isn’t empty, it’s gloriously expansive. Drawing on ancient atomist philosophy and existential reflection, Kruske imbues the work with a quiet cosmic comfort.
In an era obsessed with genre precision, Void Jazz dares to be undefined: earnest without being overwrought, meditative without becoming inert. You could call it “art-rock” or “avant-garde,” but labels fall short. What matters is that this is some of the most entrancing listening I’ve encountered all year.
Void Jazz will be released on July 11th.
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