Hal Blaine - Psychedelic Percussion

Submitted by : AA Wallace

When AA sent me this record, he tagged it by saying "this is what it sounds like when successful, talented people lose their mind." I don't think Hal Blaine lost his mind, but he certainly didn't heed to convention when he made this album.

Despite all the of the #1 hits Blaine played on (from Sinatra to Simon and Garfunkel, to the Beach Boys and Elvis) this is not an album of hits. It's even hard to just sit down and listen to this record straight through. It's imaginative, experimental and interesting, and I put it on here because essentially, this record is a drummers wet dream, and very few people could have accomplished it.

This record is 95% percussion. It consists of many overlapping drum parts, filled with bells, blocks, vibes, basically anything that can be hit with a stick. There are 12 tracks, each one representing a month out of the year, each one wackier than the last. Blaine has incredible skill and every part of his chops from rudiments, to grooves to dynamic playing gets attention.
You don't need to do drugs to listen to this album, but they would probably help.

Instead of trying to decipher everything, how about I just post a link to it?

Audio/Visual Evidence : Get the album

Mastodon - Leviathan

When I was younger I loved metal. As a drummer it appealed to my musical thirst and as a small town kid it appealed to my distaste and anger towards most things around me. It started with Metallica then it migrated to Slayer, Sepultura, Deftones, and even a few death metal bands like Deicide and Cryptopsy. Once you discover metal it stays with you. Any metalhead will tell you that Metal is forever and if you grow out of it you weren’t really into it that much to begin with.

Eventually, for me however, I grew out of it. Or at least, I thought I did. Looking back it turns out it wasn’t me, Metal just sort of got shitty for a while. Bands like Mudvayne, Killswitch Engage and Disturbed just seemed stupid to me. They were trying to come off as badass but they were way too cheesy (I mean come on, have you SEEN a Killswitch Engage video?). They had the riffs, the power and the ability, but where was the heart? My tastes sort of shifted towards music I thought felt more sincere, but luckily I wasn’t going to stray for too long.

Two bands brought me back into the realm of metal. Lamb Of God who I felt weren’t really doing anything new, but were doing everything the old school guys did right with a bit more modern production, and Mastodon, who were finally taking metal to somewhere different. They pushed the boundaries aesthetically, and Leviathan will always be my favorite example of Metal than can have blazing solos, powerful vocals and crunchy, heavy riffs, but not be cheesy and lame. All of this wouldn’t come through nearly as much if they didn’t have Brann Dailor playing drums.

Dailor is one of the lightest hitters in metal drumming. It’s necessary to pull off the crazy things that he does. He has perfectly trained feet, and he manages to play interesting double kick patterns (there is awesome foot work in Island), not just the steady thucka-thucka that most metal drummers fall back on (but when he does, it’s awesome, like in Iron Tusk). He has a serious knowledge of dynamic, and he can follow sweeping guitar riffs or simply thrash along with some crunchy beats (like in I am Ahab).

Dailor has a concise approach, but his playing is still loaded with fills and all of those little perks that make drummers swoon, but everything still feels proper. With metal it's easy to go too crazy and crowd each others space, but Dailor never makes things muddled.

If more drummers played like him maybe people would respect metal more as an art form and not just a way for sweaty dudes to smash into each other. I don’t think I would even be able to
headbang at a Mastodon show, I would just stand in the crowd, stare at Dailor and think “Jesus Christ, I have to go home and practice.”

Audio/Visual Evidence : I Am Ahab, Island

Caribou - Andorra

Dan Snaith (Ie: Caribou) always had interesting drum arrangements on his albums. While maintaining a psychedilic feel he had some songs that explored hip hop style drums (Lord Leopard from The Milk Of Human Kindness) and sometimes chopped up Fourtet-esque sampled drums (Mammals vs. Reptiles from Start Breaking My Heart). As a songwriter he was always talented, but as a drummer you can really trace his progress as he keeps making records. He started by using electronic drums and samples for his beats, but eventually he really gained a deep understanding of percussion and how to arrange it, and Andorra was born from this.

Andorra is loaded with percussion. Drum sets, vibes, bells, blocks, it's like Dan escaped from a percussion free world and decided to use everything he could on his next record. His talent as a drummer has finally caught up with his genius as an arranger and composer. With everything going on it's easy for it to sound garbled, but he seems to have a pefect place for everything to fit. Melody Day starts of with a straight rock beat (snares on 1 and 3, kick on 2 and 4) but it soon takes off with a wave of snare rolls and cymbal swells. Sandy has one kit maintaing a tribal tom beat with another sailing over it with marching drum like snare patterns and rolls all over the place.

Sundialing stands out as a drummers track as well, along with being a live favorite it really showcases Dan's ability to freely play around with time while keeping a constant pulse. his kick drum keeps steady while he plays changing patterns in the backround (this album surely benefits from headphones).

Snaith won the Polaris Prize with this record (which basically gets you a shit ton of cash and a guarantee that hipsters will flock to your shows for the next 2 years) and he deserved every inch of it. He has now gained international acclaim and I am sure he is not done exploring the realm of percussion just yet. I just love the fact that sometimes it takes guys who aren't necessarily drummers to push our boundaries further.

Audio/Visual Evidence : Sundialing, Melody Day

Chixdiggit - Chixdiggit!

When you were in high school your band sucked. It's OK, so did mine. We went through the normal high school progression of learn an instrument, find other musicians, start a band, play a couple shows, figure out you suck, break up, move on. It happens to 99% of musicians.

Chixdiggit didn't go through that cycle. They started selling band T-Shirts before they even had a band. They just thought the name Chixdiggit sounded cool. Once they started selling lots of T-Shirts they bought a drum kit, and started doling out band roles. Jason Hirsch was given the role of drummer, and with no previous experience with their instruments, Chixdiggit started practicing.

Four years later, they put out this record.

Now, Jason Hirsch isn't a dynamo on the drum kit. His time lags sometimes and his kickdrum foot is a little week, but all in all, he holds it down. What IS interesting is this. Think about how you learned how to play drums. Maybe you took lessons, maybe you sat in your basement drumming along to your favorites, maybe you were unfortunate enough to be born into a family band, but rarely does someone start playing drums in a band with absolutlely no previous experience, and if they did, rarely does that band stays together as long (or is as awesome) as Chixdiggit.

Hirsch was thrown head first into the world of punk rock drumming, and he fared pretty well. He has a lightning fast high hat hand (songs like Where's Your Mom and Stacked Like That have him playing fast quarter notes with equal power), and he is on top of every chord change or rhythm shot that happens (Henry Rollins Is No Fun has him crashing a cymbal on every change).

It's interesting to see how people approach an instrument (and what happens when they keep up with it) from a unique angle, Jason Hirsch might not be the flashiest drummer around, but he sure makes more money doing it than I do.

BDK Update

Don't give up on me yet, I have a few albums to post I just havn't had time betwween all the drinking and driving (not simultaneously) to write about them.

Indie Spotlight : Kary - The Sound Of Beauty Breathing

I talk a lot on this blog about drummers holding back on their playing, letting their subtleties speak for their style.

This album would be a horrible example of that.

I also talk a lot about leaving space for everyone else, taking up a certain place sonically and letting everyone else fill their own.

There is none of that either.

This album is drummer indulgence at it's highest point. Everywhere you can fit a drumroll it's there, every place where you can throw in high hat flourishes, snare trills or cymbal tinkles, they are there. It's like a drummers Sodom and Gomorrah, no drum kit was safe from Mark Deon's sticks. He raped and pillaged his kit and left it bleeding in the moonlight.

Why would I include an album like this? Because these guys were pretty much just out of high school, and if I could have played drums this well at that age I would have done the same fucking thing. Mark Deon was exceptionally skilled and while his playing is excessive and indulgent, you can't say the guy wasn't talented.

His time is perfect, every crazy roll, or double kick drum pattern (yes, there is lots of those too) lands at it's perfectly designated spot. He has lightning fast hands and feet and they could work fully independent of each other. Songs like Clouds Collapse have him playing high hat flourishes and double kick patterns at the end of each bar, the guitars change all over the place, but Deon is right on top of it every time. Breathe New Life also shows off his feet with short bursts of death metal like kick drums.

Actually pretty much every song has Mark playing various double kick sixteenth notes and thirty second note snare rolls. I'm just going to post a link to the album (it will die after a week). Listen to it for yourself, I think you'll get what I am talking about.

Oh, and by the way, the drums sound like shit (recording wise, obviously not playing wise), so I hope you have headphones or a decent system. They don't always have to sound pretty to be pretty.

I was once offered 50 dollars for my copy of this record (there weren't very many made), I really needed the money but I just couldn't give it up. As a drummer from the same town as Kary, it was part of our artistic heritage by that point.

Audio/Visual Evidence: Kary - The Sound Of Beauty Breathing

From Fiction - Bloodwork

If music could sonically represent characters in a high school themed sitcom I could spend hours figuring out what artists would represent who. You would have your tough guy who deep down inside is a big whinebag filled with as much anxiety and disappointment as the rest of us (that would be Metallica). You would have the bookish, sexy girl who never talks to you but could very possibly be in love with you (Feist). You would have the World of Warcraft crew (Devo), the stoners (Nirvana, or Kyuss), the bullies (Sex Pistols, Slayer), The scary bullies (GG Allin, Gorgoroth) and then you would have those bullies that not only push you around, but they are smarter than you, read more books and get higher marks in math.

That would be From Fiction.*

From Fiction's music is more advanced than anything you are going to come up with. Trust me. They could package this record in a box and hurl it through space where thousands of years in the future it gets picked up by a crew of space travelers, where they would put it on and after three songs say "I don't know Jim, this shit sounds like it's from the future!". They were a buzz band for pretty much their whole career, and they always seemed to be a band on the brink. They broke up right before heading out on a cross Canada tour, leaving a hole in indie rock that has yet to be filled. They were powerful, talented, driven and they deserved any and all attention that they got. There was really only one problem.

Their music was fucking bonkers.

Looking back now, I think that the main problem was that no one knew how to market them. They were signed to Last Gang Records, the upper echelon of Canadian indie labels, but they really had nothing in common with the other acts on Last Gang. They didn't really have anything in common with any band going at the time, I'm actually still trying to convince myself that they really existed.

I played a show with From Fiction once, and experiencing them live was like having a heart attack for 45 minutes. It was pure insanity, and the main driving force behind it all was drummer Rob Gordon.

During their set Rob was playing intricate, technically difficult patterns with more instensity and power than I have ever seen. He then stood up while keeping up his playing and intensity.

Then he started orbiting around his drum kit, while still playing and screaming vocal parts. It was really something to behold.

I can't even really dissect this record, it's something that needs to be experienced, it can't be described. It's not something you would put on for a nice sunny stroll in the park, but it's a pretty incredible piece of music. I remember that as part of the promo for this album there was a ringtone available of one of the songs. My roomate Courtney downloaded it and had it on her phone for a while. It was pretty badass, but I am sure it turned heads in line at the bank.


*Remember, this is decided by what the music sounds like, not who they are in real life. I am 86% certain that From Fiction are definitely not bullies.

Audio/Visual Evidence: On their myspace there is a video for the most accessible song, Patterns in Similar Static. That's right, you read correctly. MOST accessible.

SIlver Apples - Silver Apples

Submitted by AA Wallace (Rapper, Frontman)

In the last twenty years or so loop based drumming has become quite popular. It is not uncommon to see a mix of acoustic and electronic drums on a single kit, or various brains, trigger pads, samplers, or whatever else drummers can buy. I don't know where the money comes from, every drummer I know is broke as shit, but someone is buying all of this stuff, and given the success of Tony Verdosas VFX cymbal line, it isn't going away anytime soon.

When you ask various drummers what influenced them to start building bionic drum kits you get varied responses. Some use them to practice their time at home (metronomes won't do anymore, I guess), some are influenced by electronic drum and bass acts, some by early krautrock or new wave bands like Kraftwerk, Joy Division or Devo, and some just like to have every gadget and toy available on the market.

Once you get the basics down with loop drumming the possibilities are endless, you can basically do whatever the fuck you want as long as you catch up to the loop eventually. It's a good way to practice internal time, but it shouldn't be the be-all end-all of your playing. You can depend on loops indefinitely, and it sort of makes your job easy.

Danny Taylor didn't have it so easy.

Before all these gadgets and gizmos were available in every music store, Silver Apples were experimenting with electronics in a different way. They had audio oscillators. Nine of them. Stacked on top of each other with dozens of manual controls. Simeon Coxe would be at the helm, controlling them, while Danny Taylor sat behind the kit and tried to make sense of it all.

Taylor didn't set out to be the pioneer of electronic drumming, it sort of just happened. Their original band was pretty standard, but as Coxe began bringing in oscillators to practice, members started quitting, they thought it was getting too weird. Whether out of curiosity or necessity Taylor was the only one who stuck by Coxe's side, and they renamed themselves Silver Apples.

Their debut album, Silver Apples (I know let's see how many times I can write Silver Apples), was obviously made to showcase Coxes new toys, but Taylor gets to show his stuff as well. The fact that he could play in this band is impressive enough, but the beats on songs like Whirly-Bird and Program have a light jazz feel to them, while Dancing Gods is purely tribal, it has a primitive feel to it despite the advanced state of the technology at the time. Velvet Cave has him all over the kit but he never loses time, he is as much a machine as the oscillators.

Taylor didn't get to set all the electronic parts to a metronome or a steady tempo, he had to rely on inner rhythm to pull this off. He played acoustic drums in an electronic way, not the other way around.

Think about that next time you shell out four grand for a set of Rolands.

Audio/Visual Evidence: Download The Album Why Don'tcha.

Fugazi - The Argument

In the fifteen years Fugazi existed they released some pretty incredible, important and inspirational songs. Unfortunately they were sometimes buried between mounds of crap. They were a band that never seemed to edit themselves, giving way to sporadic musical changes, albums that never really flowed, and hit and miss songwriting. I can find a song on every Fugazi record that is fucking mind blowing along with something I wouldn't force my arch nemesis to listen to. I'm not complaining, it was just the nature of the band, every idea was explored, and that always has it's pro's and con's.

Luckily, before they called it quits, they ended on a high note with The Argument.

Along with having some of my favorite Fugazi tracks, it also has the least amount of shit, which puts it a step above the rest. Drummer Brendan Canty* played a big part in Fugazi, along with drums he also played guitar and piano, and he wrote a fair number of tracks for the band. His drumming was a solid base that allowed to other guys to play whatever the hell they wanted over top of him.

In Cashout Brendan maintains a steady rhythm with sixteenth notes on the snare rim and sporadic snare hits. Even when the song picks up with some distorted guitars he never strays, letting the other guys take care of dynamics. He does a similar thing on the Sonic Youth-esque Life and Limb. He had the ability to lay in the backround or be up front, loud and noisy like the rest of the band. In Full Disclosure he works in a plethora of rolls before rocking the fuck out on the chorus, and in Epic Problem they kick into these huge stops where Brendan keeps going, bringing up the momentum and giving him a chance to showcase himself.

I havn't even gone through the first half of this record yet and every song has something unique and impressive on Brendans part. Basically, The Argument takes every awesome thing about Fugazi and scrunches it into one record. It really doesn't have any bum songs, only certain parts I could do without (like the first half of Nightshop, for instance), and that's just personal preference.

Hell, if I would have put out a record like The Argument after being a band for 15 years, I would have called it quits too.

*While I am talking mostly about Brendan Canty I can't give him all of the credit. Fugazi messed around with two drummers a lot, and on The Argument a lot of songs have Jerry Busher playing a second kit. Busher was a roadie for Fugazi who played percussion once in a while, and they eventually brought him into the studio for this record and Furniture +2, and EP they were recording at the same time.

Audio/Visual Evidence: Full Disclosure, Epic Problem

The National - Boxer

Picture this.

You just get back home from buying a new record. You hurry to your home stereo, quickly put it on and get ready for it. As the first notes begin you hear a little bit of where the song is going. You instantly begin filling the rest out with your mind before you even hear it. As a drummer, you hear the drum parts before they are even played. Once they do kick in, they are exactly as you imagined, or at least a slight variation of it, giving you a sense of self satisfaction that he is playing generally what you would have played in the same situation. It brings you closer to the music, you feel a kinship with musicians you don't know, and will probably never meet.

This doesn't happen with The National's Boxer.

Ever.

Every song with drums on this album has really creative, original drum parts. The first time I heard it, I kept getting ideas on how the drums were going to sound, but when they came in they were anything but what I was expecting. For that, Bryan Devendorf deserves mention.

He plays fast tom/snare beats over slow lines (Brainy), he plays reserved, patient snare lines over repeating pianos (Fake Empire), even songs that have simple patterns feel slightly out of place but it works (Apartment Story). The drums really save this record from sounding contrived and take it into another realm completely.

I like it when albums have drums that aren't necessarily difficult to play, it makes them accessible for everyone, whatever their skill level. I am pretty sure I could play everything on this record, but that's not the appeal of it. The appeal is that playing something is completely different than thinking it up out of nowhere. There are so many places where Bryan could have said "fuck it" and played the obvious, and they probably would have sold the same amount of copies. Instead, I feel as if he painstakingly thought about every little thing he played, making sure it was creative but that it fit.

Bryan used a part of his brain that some drummers neglect, too much time is spent on impressing people with skill instead of style. You might listen to this record and think, this isn't impressive at all, I could do way better. That's fine, I would rather that a certain type of drummer doesn't get what I am saying anyway.

It leaves more work for those of us who get it.

Audio/Video Evidence: Brainy, Mistaken For Strangers, Squalor Victoria