Toc is a French jazz-core trio founded in 2008, featuring Jérémie Ternoy on Fender Rhodes, Ivann Cruz on electric guitar, and Peter Orins on drums. Playing with density and raw physicality, daring trance states wrapped in joyful, gripping tension, Toc delivers an energetic form of improvised music. Noise, post-rock, psychedelia, experimental pop, kraut or hardcore jazz—trying to pin down this trio’s music is a lost cause, as they delight in blurring the lines and taking us exactly where we don’t expect to go.

As the title of one of their albums suggests, Toc never plays the same thing twice. They simply can’t help it, endlessly starting over again, never quite sure they won’t tinker with a few new habits picked up on their latest tours.

Not having entirely given up on belonging to the great family of the music industry, the three musicians continuously reinvent their hypnotic free-pop, seasoning their intoxicating, sun-drenched grooves with a hint of nagging kraut jazz-core, and churning out short-lived hits that sing—and are nonetheless highly addictive.

As their name might suggest, the members of Toc tend toward the obsessive, if not downright compulsive. Their frenzied, ritualized—yet thankfully non-contagious—behaviors escort the listener into a bubbling space-time continuum before bringing them gently (or not) back down to earth in a more or less unsettled state.