Portishead - Roseland NYC

When you are sitting with a 35-piece orchestra at your back and the members of Portishead at your front your chops and flash wont save you, this is the proving ground. You've got to maintain a presence and a pulse at tempos half the speed of conventional rock bands. Every hit speaks volumes. Focus and precision are the most important parts of this puzzle, you can keep those thirty second note rolls to yourself. Your cymbals need to decay in time, your kick drum needs to be consistent with even attack and tone, and your sticks need to come down on the drums in the same fashion every time or everything goes bunk. One slip up and it all dissolves into a slow, sludgy mess. Keep the pace steady and you become the backbone of one of the best live performances ever recorded.

This was the pressure Clive Deamer had to deal with when he performed with Portishead for their Roseland NYC concert. Deamer was no stranger to the task, he had performed on their two previous albums, Dummy and Portishead, but throwing an orchestra into the mix takes on a whole new dynamic. Pardon my french, but classical musicians don't fuck around. You can't slip, everything needs to be mechanical and methodical. This is what makes his drumming on this record so perfect.

I've tackled minimalism in drumming before, but rarely do you get an example of minimalism that maintains as much soul as this. Snare trills in Mysterons lull the listener into a trance and they play off the constant whirr of a theremin perfectly. Deamer cuts them sharply as they lead into each measure. His light touch on his cymbals adds a nice amount of texture, letting the orchestra really fill up the space. The slowed down hip hop beat of Only You gets broken down into sparse hits of each drum that creates it, locking in with the bass guitar and keeping things in a state of suspension. Deamer works with the DJ to ensure neither of their rhythms collide, it's a balance act of percussion.

The amount of patience it would take to keep a steady pace on songs like Glory Box or Roads does not come without years of experience and rehearsing. Clive has played with everyone from Jeff Beck to Robert Plant, and he's even been a part of psych rock legends Hawkwind. The guy knows his rock music, but it's his approach to drumming on Portishead records that set him apart from other rock drummers. There are much less people capable of playing for Portishead than Jeff Beck. They realized this from the beginning and it has led to an amazing body of material.