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