»J’ai pensé sans paroles« is the first collaboration between polymathic artists Luke Fowler and David Grubbs. It grows out of their friendship with and admiration for the composer Brunhild Ferrari.

David first met Brunhild through working with Luc Ferrari in the mid-1990s. Brunhild stepped to the fore as a composer after Luc’s passing in 2005, and a public conversation between Brunhild and David at Café Oto in 2019 (reprinted in this edition) spurred Luke to create the marvelous filmic portraits »N’importe quoi (for Brunhild)« (2023) and »N’importe quoi (Extérieur Jour)« (2024). Brunhild offered the duo the use of archival recordings for a performance to complement a screening of the films. This became the starting point for »J’ai pensé sans paroles«—»I thought without words«—the title a phrase spoken by Brunhild in one of the films. (Some of this archival material also appears in Brunhild’s L’oreille Voleuse, a companion to »J’ai pensé sans paroles.«) Live performances led to a studio realization in Glasgow, where Luke and David added electronics and piano to their composition with Brunhild’s materials, completing this tribute to an artist and friend.

A similarly labyrinthine second piece, »Verbal Equinox«—this time drawing on Luke’s field recordings and featuring David’s guitar—was undertaken hot on the heels of “J’ai pensé sans paroles” and suggests where Fowler and Grubbs might in the future steer this most promising of collaborations.