Bloody Drum Knuckles

BDK Interview - Loic Maurin

2012-01-19T07:10:00.000-08:00

With their album Hurry Up We're Dreaming M83 have gone from being a music snob's best secret to the band everyone wants to hear at parties. Anthony Gonzalez's infectious rhythms resonate deep in the brain, and Loic Maurin is the man he trusts to bring his beats and rhythms to life. Maurin's style and ability intersperses very well with Gonzalez's programmed percussion, and together they keep festival crowds dancing with their amazing live shows.

Maurin was kind enough to answer some questions while on a break from promoting Hurry up We're Dreaming. This is the english translation from the original questions, which were posed in French (original is posted at the bottom)

1. How old were you when you started to play the drums?

I started banging on barrels of detergent when I was three years old and began lessons at eight. Very early on I discovered a love for tapping on things.

2. What was the musical climate like at that time?

Like lots of kids in the 80s, I was only exposed to what was on mainstream radio. That was the pinnacle of drum machines like the TR and Simmons Pads... Early on I was confused between acoustic and electronic drums, I thought my first drum kit was going to sound like the radio.

3. Are there any drummers that influenced your style early on?

When I was very young I was really into tracks by Status Quo, Tears For Fears and Phil Collins, but I was totally ignoring the fact that I was hearing Omar Hakim or Manu Katche! I eventually became a fan of rock and metal music, especially Roger Taylor and Nicko McBrain. Also guys like Josh Freese, Abe Cunningham and Matt Chamberlain. I am equally a fan of gospel drummers such as Thomas Pridgen, Aaron Spears and Gerald Hayward.

4. You have a talent for playing well-balanced rhythms that fuse electronic as well as live drums. How did you first become introduced to electronic percussion?

I started when I had to learn electronic parts for M83, I had only played acoustic drums until that point. I introduced a drum pad on our Saturdays=Youth tour. With our music it's especially important to reproduce the electronic components of the album but also have the power of a live kit. It really brings out the life of the show. I switch between electronic and acoustic drums often within the same track.

5. How do you think the role of a drummer has changed since the rise in popularity of electronic drums in all genres of music?

Knowledge of electronics and sample pads are already a requirement I have to say, and it's even better if you add Ableton skills to that! You know, I've always thought that having extra skills will help me to get some gigs, that's why I also play guitar, bass,... but nowadays it's definitely helpful to know how to use computer programs. Just hammering on the drums won't probably be enough to find some work I'm afraid, to me being professional is more about that. And I think it has always been this way. By the way one good drummer who knows how to deal with other stuff will always be chosen by the band or production over one good drummer who can only drum.

6. When the time comes to arrange and record drum parts, how much collaboration is there between yourself and Anthony?

When I arrive at the studio, Anthony has already composed the majority of the drum patterns and some drum fills that are important. My job in the studio is to replay the patterns on the demo and add my own touches of my sound and my drum fills. This is why I love playing M83 songs so much, because the patterns were written by a "non-drummer".

7. Is there any parts to songs that you are more attached to, or that you feel are more representative of your playing?

I like that I get to play a variation of styles. There's the power drumming on Steve McQueen or the dancefloor patterns on Colors, or Mirrors, then a country pattern on Raconte-moi Une Histoire. I love playing in a group that allows me to change it up on so many tracks.

8. M83 have been extremely busy playing the festival circuit since the release of Hurry Up We're Dreaming. What is the best and worst thing about playing all of these festivals?

The best thing is definitely getting to play our music in front of thousands of people at once. We've had the opportunity to play festivals like Coachella, Lollapalooza and Sasquatch and they've been nothing but amazing experiences. The worst part is that often there is no soundcheck and very short changeover, but we've added a group of techs to the team, so now it's their job to stress about it!

It was a pleasure interviewing Loic, and as M83 gears up to hit the festivals yet again this summer (They've already been announced for Coachella 2012) I wish them the best of luck.

_____________________________________________________________________

Now here is the original French transcript.

1. Quel âge aviez-vous quand vous avez commencer joué de la batterie?

J''ai commence a taper sur des barils de lessive a l'age de 3 ans, et j'ai commence a prendre des lecons de batterie a 8 ans. J'ai manifeste tres tot une envie de taper sur des choses!

2. Quel était le climat musical dans ta region a cette temps?

Comme beaucoup de kids dans les annees 80, j'entendais surtout la musique que diffusaient les radio mainstream. C'etait l'avenement de drum machine comme les TR et les pads Simmons... a l'epoque je faisais la confusion entre batterie acoustique et electronique, je pensais que mon premier drum kit dans ma chambre sonnerait comme a la radio!

3. Est-ce qu'il y avait des joueurs de batteries qui sont influencer ta style quand tu étais jeune?

Tres jeune, j'adorais des tracks de Status Quo, Tears for Fears ou Phil Collins... mais j'ignorais que j'entendais Omar Hakim ou Manu Katche! Apres je suis devenu fan de rock et de metal, et surtout de Nicko McBrain et Roger Taylor. Apres je suis tres influence par Josh Freese, Abe Cunningham et Matt Chamberlain. Je suis egalement fan de tous les batteurs de gospel comme Thomas Pridgen, Aaron Spears et Gerald Heyward.

4. Tu as un talent pour jouer avec une propre balance entre la percussion électronique et puis les batteries, comment est-ce que tu a devenu introduit aux percussion électronique?

J'y suis venu parce qu'il fallait jouer les parties de percussions electronique en live avec M83, je ne faisais que de la batterie acoustique au debut. J'ai ajoute un drum pad pendant le "Saturdays=Youth" tour. Pour notre musique c'est tellement important de pouvoir mixer des sons electroniques presents sur les albums et la puissance d'un kit acoustique qui fait vivre le live.

Je passe souvent de l'un a l'autre dans un meme track.

5. Comment pense tu que la rôle des batteurs est changer depuis que la percussion électronique est devenu plus populaire dans tous les genres de musique?

Connaissance de percussion l'électronique est déjà une obligation que j'ai à dire, et c'est encore mieux si vous ajoutez des compétences à Ableton aussi! Vous savez, j'ai toujours pensé que d'avoir des compétences supplémentaires va m'aider à obtenir quelques concerts, c'est pourquoi je joue aussi guitare, basse, ... mais aujourd'hui, il est certainement utile de savoir comment utiliser les programmes informatiques. Juste martelage sur la batterie ne sera probablement pas suffisant pour trouver un travail, je crains que, pour moi d'être professionnel est plus à ce sujet. Et je pense qu'il a toujours été de cette façon. Si tes chois sont un batteur bon qui sait comment utiliser les electroniques, et un bon batteur qui ne peuvent jouer les tambour, le premier va probablement être choisi par la bande ou de production chaque cas.

6. Quand le temps viens pour arranger/enregister les batteries avec M83, est-ce qu'il y a de la collaberation entre Anthony et vous?

Quand j'arrive au studio, Anthony a deja composes la majorites des drum pattern et certains drum fills importants. Mon job en studio consiste a rejouer les drum parts de ses demos en y ajoutant mon feeling, mon son et mes drum fills. C'est aussi pourquoi j'aime autant jouer les drum parts de M83 parce qu'elles ont ete composees par un "non drummer".

7. Est-ce qu'il y a des certain partis de chansons que vous étiez attachés à ou qui étais parfait pour votre style de jeu particulier?

En fait j'aime jouer toute sorte de style: le power drumming sur "Steeve McQueen", ou les patterns dancefloor de "Couleurs" et "Mirrors", ou le pattern country like de "Raconte moi une histoire"... J'aime jouer dans un groupe qui me permet de jouer differemment sur chaque track.

8. M83 est très occupé depuis la publication de "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" avec des spectacles a plusieurs festival. Quel est le meilleur et le pire chose avec jouer sur l'etage de ces Festivals?

La meilleure chose est de pouvoir jouer devant des milliers de personnes et de tenter de les amener a notre musique, on a eu la chance de jouer a Coachella, Lollapolooza ou Sasquatch par le passe, que de bonnes experiences.

La pire chose est souvent le manque de soundcheck, avec des changeover tres court, mais maintenant dans l'equipe on a des techs qui stressent a notre place!

Ce fut un plaisir de Loic entrevue, et comme M83 se prépare à frapper les festivals cet été encore une fois (ils ont déjà été annoncées pour Coachella 2012) Je leur souhaite la meilleure des chances.

M83 - Hurry Up We're Dreaming

2011-11-27T11:00:00.001-08:00

There aren't a whole lot of live drums on this electronic masterpiece by M83, but god damn is it ever amazing when they do come in. Loic Maurin has such a presence on the drums, it takes things to a completely new level when he's playing. He's the perfect example of a drummer who has adapted with the art form, blending in live drums with samples and electronics and weaving in between the programmed hits. He's half man and half machine. He's a strong, patient player who knows where to place hits that will be heard, but won't over take the grandeur of the piece. There is just no electronic replacement for an extremely solid, textural live drummer, and more and more electronic artists are starting to realize it. Maurin is a big part of why M83 are such an amazing live band, his energy and talent allow the rest of the band to really go off. He's a drummer you can trust to hold everything together.

Stylistically, Maurin fits in with guys like Martin Bulloch of Mogwai, Gerry Fuchs of Maserati and Brad Weber of Caribou, except he takes that powerful, thick kind of playing and puts in on the dance floor. He manages to have a unique and noticeable style on the drums without ever feeling excessive or selfish in his playing. He pushes himself but never beyond the songs means. That's an ability I wish more drummers had (or that I had myself, really).

The percussion arrangements on this album are the perfect blend of programmed drums and live playing, and most of that credit goes to Anthony Gonzalez who has an incredible sense of rhythm. A drum part is only as good as the song that it's for, and there is no lack of prime material on this whole double album. I don't know what it's like to play these songs in front of a festival crowd, but I'll bet it's pure bliss.

I can't embed it, but check out this video of M83 playing on Jimmy Fallon, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

Classic BDK

2011-11-19T06:43:00.001-08:00

Some videos of my old band recently surfaced, and it sort of led to me spending a night watching some old footage and being nostalgic, just thought I'd share a few golden oldies.

Of the 3 years or so Alan Benjamin was a band I think these were my favorite two songs to play. We never recorded I Can't Wait and I had totally forgotten about it until this video surfaced. It's definitely the only recording of it ever.

These are some early videos of when Sleepless Nights had two drummers, myself and the wonderful Mary Cobham (whom recently put out her own record that is fucking killer, you can hear it here). The video of Allyson Got Robbed is from a show we did on Mary's birthday in Fredericton and is probably still one of my favorite shows of all time.

This is footage from midway through The Establishment's existence (you can download our final album for free HERE) The first video is from a drag show we played at Reflections. Lots of booze, sweat and lipstick. The second is from one of the last shows to happen at Yarmouth's Cotton Mill, the only all ages venue that would let rock shows happen for the whole time I was playing in bands in Yarmouth. It was a great room with a really cool atmosphere, and I've seen so many life changing shows in there it's impossible to count them all.

Well I had a fun time re-hashing old memories and shows. I hope you did to. If not I don't care. It's my blog and I'll do what I want.

BDK Interview - Liam O'Neill

2011-10-23T17:03:00.000-07:00

Drum face, it affects all of us.

Liam O'Neill from Suuns was kind enough to do a back and forth email interview over the last couple weeks. He gave me the most thought out, elaborated answers I've gotten from anybody I've ever interviewed, and is probably the best example of the kind of drummer I intended on promoting when I started this blog. His powerful minimalist approach is accentuated by his broad imagination, and seeing him play this past weekend for the Halifax Pop Explosion was as amazing as I had hoped. Here's his interview:

1. Where did you grow up, and what was the musical climate like when you started playing?

I grew up in Kelowna, BC. Arid, beautiful, at the heart of the Okanagan Valley, and chock-a-block full of golf, wine, and blue hairs. Kelowna wasn't much of a buzzing town arts-wise. There was something of a music scene, mostly comprised of high school band teachers, guys in cover bands, and a few pros who gigged for a living. From pretty early on, I could tell that if I really wanted to get somewhere with music this probably wasn't the place to do it. On the plus side though, as a young drummer I would play with some of my teachers and got some gigs with the local orchestra there. I was way in over my head, and that pushed me a bit. Story of my life, really.

2. Who were some of your favorite local drummers that you saw early on?

I would go and see my drum teacher Lonnie Burma play around town when he did, but he didn't gig a ton. He was really impressive to me - he was into Vinnie Colaiuta and guys like that so you could see how that can make an impression on a young dude like me. I would go and watch some of the older kids, the ones who had gone off to jazz school or whatever, whenever they would come back to town. More than liking their playing, I remember liking how fucking cool they were. I think that really made a big impression on me. In a way, the content of the playing was secondary. These kids were super hip to me, playing what I then believed to be some modern and edgy shit. That's what I wanted to do.

3. How did you get started on playing the drums?

My siblings and I all took piano lessons when we were tots. It was alright, but I found reading music arduous and difficult. I would usually just figure out the songs by watching my sister play them, or I figured them out by ear. So I guess I craved a more intuitive, more visceral instrument. Drums just seemed like the easiest instrument to me. That, and of course they were fucking cool. What else is music but the eternal, abstract quest to impress the opposite sex? I wasn't gonna impress any chicks playing classical gas on an electric piano. I set up some pots and pans in front of the TV and I played along to MuchMusic videos until my mom got sick of never having any strainers or pot lids, and I got a junker Westbury kit for my twelfth birthday. I would get up early to play those drums.

The quality of this photo is on par with the quality of most Westbury drum kits.

4. How old were you when you started playing in bands?

I guess I started playing in bands at about age 15 or so. By that time, I was a young budding jazzbian. My friends and I would hang in the band room at lunch hour, rehearsing. We were already deep into stuff like Miles Davis' 60's quintet, which in retrospect seems ridiculous and embarrassing to me, but at the time we thought we were so fucking cool. The idea of a bunch of 15 year olds trying to play avant-garde jazz is precocious to the point of silly, but I'm glad we tried it. Since then I've always played what I consider to be ambitious music, with varying degrees of success. We also gigged pretty regularly around town, which was good experience, and one time the girl I dug came to one of our lame gigs at a cafe, watching us right up front. I did not speak to her.

5. What was some of the first music you feel really started to influence your playing?

There are probably a million things that have influenced me heavily that I'm not even aware of (those are the most important influences I think - they give you character), but the first major musical event I can still remember well was getting Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. I was obsessed with it. It was epic, diverse, emblematic and mysterious. Certainly Jimmy Chamberlain's drumming marked me - it was obvious to me even as a kid that he was what propelled tracks like Jellybelly to insane heights, but I also appreciated him holding down the fort on tracks like Where The Boys Fear To Tread. The only other thing I can remember making an impression on me was having an audio cassette of Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back, when I was a kid, and I remember that it scared the shit out of me but I was totally fascinated by it. The theme to Peter and the Wolf had a similar effect on me.

6. How did you eventually move to Montreal and become part of Suuns?

Directly after high school I moved to Montreal to study jazz drums at McGill University. It was a good new beginning for me - nobody in Montreal knew how much of a reclusive geek I was, so I started being social and partying a lot. I met a lot of older musicians, and Ben (our singer and main songwriter) was one of them. I thought he was totally fucking cool. We would run into each other around town and joke about starting a rock band, and then one day he called me up and told me he was actually starting a rock band and would I be his drummer. I was like "YA". Max was a guy who I had been playing with in various projects for a few years already at that point, and we asked if he wanted to play keyboards because hey, why not? Joe was in the rehearsal space with Ben the first time I walked in, and in four years we still have not exchanged one single word between us. I assume he's in the band but that's about all I can tell you about him. We really had very little of an idea what we were doing. That early stuff was just totally bonkers, thrashy shit. Ben would show us a song, we'd play it once or twice and that was it. Voilà.

7. I'm surprised to hear you had a beginning playing Jazz because your playing is so straight and robotic on a lot of the record, at what point did you sort of start to detach from your early jazz tendencies?

I guess I've always been drawn to precise, economic players, even with the jazz guys I listened to. I like drummers who sound like they're composing parts rather than creating a feel, and I've always tried to play like that. Suuns happens to be a great arena in which to exercise that aesthetic. When I was into jazz I always liked Tony Williams more than Elvin Jones, and I really flipped over guys like Ben Perowsky, especially cos he has a very rock n roll sound even when he plays jazz. Actually I think Tony Williams plays on some of that PiL stuff, not to mention Lifetime. Jim Black, too. So that kinda stuff was important transitional material for me when I was 21 or so when i was getting tired of school and getting to a point where playing jazz seemed irrelevant and depressing to me. The idea of being a smart, pattern-based, hooky, rock drummer was starting to appeal to me more and more. I got Interpol's Turn On The Bright Lights and that totally did it. Icy, beautiful, economical and smart. It was the first time I really heard drumming that made me say "I want to play like that". Then I found out about Stephen Morris (Joy Division) and stuff like that. I was really trying to go in that direction when the band started. I was trying to get away from playing in a linear, stream of consciousness kind of a way (the way a lot of young excited kids play) and get more methodical, really construct my parts.

8. I'm assuming you've moved on from your set of junker Westburys. What kind of kit do you play on now, and do you have any pieces that you feel really define your sound?

I picked up a kit of Slingerlands from 1965 last year and I love them. I also have a new Gretsch renown series snare drum that's actually a pretty interesting sounding drum. Really wide sound, like long, even blasts of white noise. It kind of reminds me of Jeremy Gara's (Arcade Fire) snare. But the drums on Zeroes are a total Frankenstein kit. I was just playing whatever I could find. I don't see any part of my setup as being totally essential to my sound per se, but I definitely do have a much stronger idea of how I want to sound in a general sense than I did when we made Zeroes. If anything, the band is getting more electronic, so maybe I should say my MPC is the most important part of my sound. Just kidding. That would be a dumb answer.

Where we're going, we won't need drums.

9. Going into the recording of Zeroes QC, was there anything specific you hoped to accomplish with your playing?

Yeah totally. I had some really specific goals, some better executed than others. At the time, recording everything separately was intriguing to me. That disjointed kinda stuff (again, Stephen Morris) where all the various percussion elements are mixed and effected differently was bonging my bell. I recorded Arena in that manner, and I think that's some of the stuff I'm more proud of on that record. I wanted to explore the more studio-specific aspects of percussion rather than the straight up performance-on-the-drumset aspects. We cut up and looped a lot of my parts, like on Sweet Nothing. That whole song was built in the studio. I was also trying to get away from that Bonham style sound with a lot of room mics in the mix. I did most of the drums in a dry room - a lot of the songs are just one overhead, snare mic and bass drum mic I wanted no room ambience, and for most of the space to come from post- prod reverbs, if there was any space at all. Varying degrees of success with that one. Songs like Gaze are a little more conventional, with room mics and whatnot. That, and playing well. That was another one of my goals. Varying degrees of success.

10. Are there any songs in particular you feel represent your artistry more than others?

Different songs in different ways. I mentioned Arena earlier and I think that's telling of my meticulousness and attention to detail (I spent a whole day doing that percussion, cutting it up, orchestrating it all - the guys were getting pretty annoyed I think). I also kinda like how Gaze came off. hat's more the side of me that digs David Lovering (Pixies) and whoever plays in Tom Petty's band. And then you have stuff like Marauder which is a total mess of bullshit. Whether I like it or not, that came from me. I guess "representative of my artistry" and "proud of" are not necessarily mutually exclusive. It's a lifelong process.

11. If you had to choose between never being able to record again or never being able to play live, which would you choose?

Wow. That's a tough call. I think I'm a much better performer than I am a studio magic-worker, and for that reason I'm tempted to choose to cut out performing when faced with that awful decision, just because I could stand to get so much better at recording, but I could never do that. Performing is too much a part of who I am, it's been too central to my life for too long, too thrilling for me to give up. If I ever quit performing I'd probably have a massive cocaine problem or something. Recording is more the thinking man's side of the musical process, and I, for better or for worse, am partial to the more visceral side of it.

12. If you could put together your own band using anyone, well known or not, who would be in it?

Probably I'd like to have a duo with my good friend Adam "Herr Bonizar" Kinner. He and I are very similar personally and musically, and I like the idea of starting a project with someone only because you really like spending time with them, you can do no wrong. It makes the band process-oriented rather than goal-oriented, which is the best/most sustainable way to be. Similarly, I have a very abstract fantasy of touring Europe with my girlfriend Fjola, who likes cool music. We'd probably have a cool project together. Oh yeah and I would wanna be in Fleetwood Mac. Not replace Mick Fleetwood. Just hang out with those cats. That'd be wild.

13. Have you ever been to Halifax before? What do you hope to do/see while your here?

Yeah, I played HPX with Young Galaxy back when I used to play with them maybe three or four years ago. It was fun. I won't be there for very long, so I won't get to check much stuff out. Maybe jet an eye along the harbor, get over my jet-lag with a few too many Propellers (I'm writing this while on a plane back from Iceland). Also, this will be Suuns' third shared festival bill with Chad VanGaalen, and this time I want to work up the nerve to walk right up to him and tell him to his face that Van Gaalen 1 has some of the most shreddin' guitar solos of all time.

4. What modern drummers (friends or otherwise) would you like to see get a little more attention?

I'm digging the girls these days. Stephanie Bailey from The Black Angels is totally amazing. Whoever that girl from Warpaint is, her sound is crazy. This weekend at Iceland Airwaves, I caught a set from Denmark's Thulebasen, whose female drummer was excellent. I ran into Tune-Yards' Merrill Garbus (a fantastic drummer in her own right) after the set and we both agreed that, universally, there's something unique and heavy about the touch of a female drummer. I know you're supposed to be all affirmative action about it and say that there's no inherent difference between a female drummer and a male drummer, but I find that that's just not true. If there was ever an argument for the existence of femininity as a quality unto itself, free of societal influence, it would be the sound of a really amazing female drummer. It's a really hip sound that's been largely untapped until recently, and now you're seeing more and more of them. Just watch, in five years, less even, everyone's gonna want a female drummer. I know that might sound like a silly generalization, and I hope I don't sound sexist or whatever, but I really believe it's true.

Suuns - Zeroes QC

2011-09-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

It's a couple months before the Halifax Pop Explosion so I began my usual ritual of checking out a bunch of the bands who have been announced to play that I'm not all too familiar with. This has basically devoloped into me just listening to the Suuns record like mad for the last three weeks. Now their show is the one I am most excited for, except for my own (Ahem, Friday the 21st, Tribeca, 8:30pm, cough).

I mean really, how long has it been since I wrote about an actual record/new drummer? Months? This record, and especially Liam O'neil have given me something to be excited to write about, at a time when I felt I had pretty much exhausted myself.

Liam's drumming combines a lot of elements I've talked about before. There's a touch of the very kraut-rock sort of minimalist drumming of groups like Kraftwerk and Can, but there's also this amazing underlying intensity that only escapes in short bursts, like Liam is holding and wrestling an explosion in a jar -- letting it out to ease the tension only briefly. Even at his most minimal his playing maintains it's own life. It's methodical and well structured, but it still remains stylized. He also can change between laying low in the background and being the life of the party with ease, and songs like Sweet Nothing and PVC are two songs that I think demonstrate both sides of Liam's playing perfectly. Both songs have straight, well positioned playing that has brief moments of wonderful abandon that really takes their music into another level.

Songs like Marauder and Armed For Peace are much grittier and livelier, but are still rooted in Liam's spot on precision. Even when he's traveling around the kit a little he never strays from the foundation, and his kick drum especially keeps things in focus while the rest of him explores. The strong approach to the kick drum gives some of the songs a slight hip hop feel, albeit a dark, twisted one.

I can't wait to hear these songs performed live, and if you're in Halifax for the Pop Explosion you would be doing yourself a favor to check out Suuns as well. We can hang out. I'll be the guy with the beard, it shouldn't be too hard to spot me.

Drumming. IT'S EXTREEEEEME.

2011-08-27T07:20:00.000-07:00

Drumming for sport makes about as much sense to me as bowling for art does. Some things should just not exist, and extreme sport drumming competitions are right up there with non-alcoholic beer and Jersey Shore for me. Let me say this once and for all -- art, and music especially, is not a competition. Music is the conception and execution of ideas, a creative endeavor subjective to the audience. To try and quantize it and turn it into some sort of feat of strength and endurance goes against the main reason lots of people started to play music in the first place, and I find that insulting.

Now, I have no problem with a friendly group of drummers getting together and playfully trying to see who can outplay the other. I would never be involved, but I understand that it's going to happen. But when you start holding yearly competitions and people spend months and even years training for these things, you do nothing to advance the art form. I would even argue that on top of being just plain stupid, these kinds of competitions are detrimental to the art of drums as a whole, and insulting to anyone who takes themselves remotely serious as a musician.

Think about it, if you're spending all your practice time trying to play 1000 single strokes per minute, you're neglecting every other part of the drums to perform something that isn't even applicable in most areas of drumming, and for what? Bragging rights over a bunch of other bedroom drum geeks? If your only goal as a drummer is to be the fastest drummer there is, why not apply that kind of training and focus on something that will actually be relevant to more than just a small niche group of people? So many times I hear people talk about someone as a great drummer, when all they can do is play really fast. That's not great drumming. Anyone with a practice pad and loads of time on their hands can achieve that. Drumming is about expression, and the only thing you're expressing to me by focusing solely on speed is that you're a misguided douche-bag. Just spend ten minutes browsing the poorly designed World's Fastest Drummer website (complete with a super annoying pop up that shows up EVERY TIME YOU NAVIGATE TO ANOTHER PAGE) and I think you'll get my point. These people didn't get into drums for the love of music or art, they got into it because they feel the need to be the best at something, and they sucked at regular sports so they invented their own. I have a problem with ego-stroking endeavors in general, and this is just a big circle-jerk for drum nerds.

If you've read my interview with Jerry Granelli, you might remember him talking about his mentor, drum legend Joe Morello. Morello, in his day, was probably the most technically enabled drummer alive. He had speed, but he also had creativity and intuition, and it made him the most sought after jazz drummer for years. When I asked Jerry what the most important thing Joe taught him was, he knew instantly. Morello would always tell him this -- "The only reason to have technique is to serve the music." It wasn't about bravado or one-upmanship, it was about having the proper skills available to you so that when the time came you could contribute to the musical idea properly. We're all slaves to the ideas and that's the point.

Now, I understand that in Joe Morello's time, things like drum machines and Death Metal didn't exist, but the idea is still the same. Take, for example, someone like Florent Mounier from Cryptopsy. He is extremely technically skilled and is one of the fastest drummers in metal today, but the music demands it. That's fine. Listening to his playing you still get a sense of his musical identity, he is an extremely talented and important drummer. He's an example of someone who along with learning the speed, still maintains an artistic sense and vision with his music, which is why so many drummers respect him. With Extreme Metal there is a very thin line between serving the music and serving the musicians, and it's pretty obvious when you listen to certain bands which ones belong in which category.

That's why I have such and issue with sport drumming. It breeds the kind of drummer that is only in it to serve himself and show off his abilities, and that is when art begins to lose it's credibility. It went from being a curiosity among drummers into a league of people who put all of their time and energy into training and preparing and attempting to outplay each other, and it seems to be most popular in the realm of drummers. You never hear of speed-piano competitions, or endurance harmonica-ing. For some reasons drumming attracts a certain crew of people that feel the need to always be out-doing each other, and those kinds of drummers are the worst. If we start encouraging drummers to simply focus on speed and technical aspects without giving them the proper artistic foundation, then we're just going to end up with a bunch of beef-headed braggarts walking around backstage with their chests puffed out trying to challenge everyone, and they're going to drink all of my band beers.

So the next time you encounter a drummer that's talking about how amazing someone is because they can play really fast, do me a favor, look them in the eye and say "So what?"

Impress me with your imagination, it's what separates us from the monkeys.

You Know, It's Sad But True.

2011-07-19T08:58:00.000-07:00

"I never thought I'd see the day where Metallica would come to town and I wouldn't give a shit."

This is what my friend Josh Kogan said as we stood outside Gus' Pub last Thursday as Metallica was winding down their show on Citadel Hill just blocks away. I had been trying to find a way to sum up how I felt about the whole thing, and his statement hit the nail on the head. How could a band so influential to me as a musician in the early years of my development, a band I listened to, played along to and defended constantly growing up, how could they come to town and instead of going I chose to pay 7 dollars to see VKNGS play at Gus' Pub? The answer itself is multi-faceted, but before I get into it I can still sum it up with one word.

Lars.

I have had more conversations about Lars Ulrich than any other drummer I can think of, and given the heated discussions about the Metallica performance on a local message board, I can see I'm not alone. For the last little while (especially since the Napster debacle, St Anger in general and the documentary Some Kind Of Monster) Metallica fans, while staying true to their band, have turned on their opinionated Danish drummer. There are many claims that he can't pull off the old material as well, with rumors of backing tracks and even using guitars/bass triggers to mask his incompetence (which for the record I would just like to say is ridiculous and highly improbable).

Just to get a hint of what I mean, here is the album version of Dyers Eve.

And here is a recent video of them playing this song live. Notice that A) He doesn't do the double kicks through the verses. and B) Lots of his rolls are flappy and sloppy.

Now, every band who has lasted for as long as Metallica will have a slew of fans pining for "the good old days" but rarely is the disdain focused on only one member as it is with Lars. People complain about him not being able to pull off the iconic double kicks in One, or the speed in Battery and they complain about poor timing and badly executed drum fills. People love to pick him apart, especially now. They want their icon back, the great drummer who could pound through those riffs in nothing but a pair of spandex shorts and still have enough energy after the show to fuck a few groupies. The great drummer who has probably influenced as many players in his generation as Keith Moon and John Bonham did in theirs. But here is where my opinion differs.

I don't think Lars Ulrich was ever really a great drummer. Not really anyway.

Before I get into it, there are some things you should know.

I loved Metallica when I was younger, and you know what? I still do. I even liked their post-Sandman records up until St Anger. Hell, Load was the first Metallica record I owned and I played the shit out of it. Sure, it wasn't really metal, but who gives a fuck, it was still a good rock record. Bands evolve, and they could have done a lot worse.

Now, as far as Lars goes, I have probably played along to at least 75% of everything Metallica put out until 1999. I spent hours in the basement with a dusty old ghetto blaster just trying to keep up and I learned a hell of a lot from those albums. Just writing any of this stuff feels sacrilegious considering how important that music was to me. I'm sure everyone who grew up with me and is reading this thinks I'm a huge hypocrite, but whatever, people change and learn.

Now this revelation that Lars wasn't the god everyone made him into didn't come overnight, things started to sort of change my opinion a little at a time. I think the first inclination I had that maybe he wasn't so great was when I was on one of my first tours to Ontario, and someone in the band had downloaded a version of Ride The Lightning that was ripped from a 45rpm vinyl, but was slowed down to 33rpm. This gave songs like Fight Fire With Fire and For Whom The Bell Tolls an awesome, sludgy feel and it was like listening to a whole other doom metal album. The guitars sounded thick and muddy, the bass was huge, but the drums? Well the drums sort of ruined everything.

It was very apparent when the drums came in that while the guitars and bass were spot on, the timing on the drums was off pretty much all the time. Rolls were sloppy, double kicks were skipping and swinging and the whole thing felt very detached and sloppy. You might think that's unfair, to slow down a record and then criticize it, but I guarantee you if you slow down a Slayer record Dave Lombardo's drumming will sound just as tight as it does sped up. When you think of all the great metal drummers that play tighter, faster music than Metallica, it's pretty disappointing that Lars couldn't do then what thousands of drummers that he influenced can do now. But again, this was just my first inclination, my second was when I found out how Metallica makes records.

When bands record an album, the standard procedure is to start with the drums. For most forms of rock and metal, this is the blueprint. Drums are the foundation of a band, so recording them first and getting them right is usually the first step. then the bass guitar, then guitars, then vocals, yadda yadda yadda. But that's not how Metallica makes records.

Metallica record the guitars first. Then the bass. Then the drums. Now, taking different approaches to recording is not necessarily a bad thing, but this seems like it would be a lot more work for no reason. Unless of course, you have a drummer with poor timing, then it makes total sense.

You see, the thing for me that really tips the scale in favor of Lars being a not-so-great drummer, is how he writes drum parts, or rather, how he doesn't write them at all. Lars' style is something I've invented a term for, he drums-by-numbers. What that means is, Lars has about as much creativity and imagination as Justin Bieber does. He simply plays the most obvious and easiest accompaniment to the guitars. When the guitars go chugga-chugga-chugga-womp, he goes thudda-thudda-thudda-pow and everything is layed out for him nice and neat. I mean hell, why think of a cool part when you can sell a million records by putting absolutely no thought into being stylish or creative?

Now you might be wondering how I can attack the drumming of someone I learned so much from, but here's the thing. The way Lars plays drums lends itself perfectly to someone just learning the basics because essentially, that's all Lars does. He plays the most obvious, basic thing, thus making his albums great learning tools. It's a great foundation for further development, except Lars himself has never developed, and with age his endurance and speed has naturally deteriorated, leaving his absence of creativity and talent much more noticeable. Now, knowing this, it makes much more sense to record albums the way Metallica does, because with the guitar part locked in tight he can figure out what to do instead of the guitars playing off of the drums, which I'm sure would just be a disaster.

Normally, I wouldn't care about this sort of thing. Hell, Phil Rudd has made a career out of this exact thing, and I love that about him. But Phil Rudd isn't getting top honors in best drummer polls, and he's not on the covers of the drum magazines. For some reason, Lars has been able to fool hordes of drummers into thinking he's this amazing virtuoso, and his inflated ego and attitude towards everything just drive me crazy enough that I felt like someone had to finally say it. There's no shame in being a mediocre part of an otherwise amazing, talented and iconic band, but don't walk around as if you're the Zeus of an instrument you've hardly mastered.

I firmly believe that Metallica could have rounded up any drummer (and really, they kind of did) and been just as successful. Lars should realize his place in that band isn't to wow everyone into thinking he's incredible, his place is to keep a solid foundation so the other guys can really show off.

You might not agree with me but I can guarantee you that if you had a choice between getting Lars in your band or any of the top one thousand drummers who cite him as an influence, you'd be better off with his pupils, and I find that extremely sad.

So maybe I didn't go to the show because I didn't want to spent $120 to see one band I liked. Maybe I didn't go because I didn't feel like shoving my way around a crowd of meatheads and spend seven dollars a beer in a crowded beer tent, or maybe I didn't go because I didn't want to be disappointed by a group that meant so much to me as kid. But I hope that the people that did go had as good a time as I imagine the 15 year old me would have had, those many years ago. Nothing I say should change that.

BDK Interview - Jerry Granelli Returns

2011-06-24T11:15:00.000-07:00

Last year I interviewed Jerry Granelli when he put out his solo drum album, 1313. It was the first in-person interview I ever did and on top of learning a lot myself, I felt it was one of the best interviews I conducted. This summer Jerry put together a trio and recorded Let Go, a shining example of his his progression as an artist, and his keen technical sense. While he was doing press for his album I was given the opportunity to interview him again and I jumped at the chance. We talked about his new album, his approach to drumming, and the death of his longtime friend and mentor, Joe Morello. It's always a pleasure to talk to Jerry, and I'll probably take every chance I get.

You've had lots of experience playing in a trio setting, what gave you the inspiration to put one together yourself?

I'd been doing V-16, the double guitar quartet and we'd done three records in six years. Then that kind of came to a point where it kind of needed a rest. I did the solo record in between, and it's like Ok, well, what do I want to do next? And I've had this ongoing relationship with Simon Fisk. I'd known him since he was a kid, and I'd known Danny Oore since he was a kid. I just really wanted to try something with them, and we got a heritage grant from the province to get together. So those guys came out for seven days, and everybody brought music and we just worked on what exactly the trio was going to sound like. I knew I didn't want it to be another guitar band, or another saxophone trio. Danny plays all the saxophones and Simon plays cello you know, so it was really a luxury to kind of get into it that way, but it was really a hard way to work, because you go "Ok, this isn't my concept, I'm leaving it pretty open" and "we're going to try to work on material but we're also going to try to find a sound". And I think we've got it. I think we got what we wanted.

How do you go about preparing to record an album like this? Because apart from the underlying theme it's very free and organic. Do you just set up and go?

There are written pieces for this. But with V16 the form kept coming up that we didn't improvise on the pieces, but the pieces were meant to be improvised in. So you're not leaving the core material, but you're finding the freedom within the material to make it sound completely formless, but it does have a form. Which is different than the usual jazz technique of playing something, then playing on it. I was thinking last night how I called the record "Let Go", because we had to let go to make it, but now I feel like I should have called it "Cutting To The Bone" because there is really, no fat at all man. It's very lean, and when I listen to it -- the way it's recorded and the way it's played, it's very honest.

Did you find that going from a four-piece to a three-piece left you more sonic room to explore?

There is definitely more sonic space, but it was kind of a loneliness at first. Not as lonely as the solo record I guess, but it's also, you know, a trio is sort of like a really small fast car, It turns really quick. And then with no harmonic instrument, no chordal instrument, you don't have any of that. V16 was about as fast as four people could get and it would sometimes have two or three songs going at the same time, and I think this band is capable of that.

I was really focused on doing a studio album, and not just capturing a live event.You know, there's cello overdubs and we got Mary Jane (Lamond, Gaelic vocal icon) on the album, there is two songs with her. I just love her voice, she's amazing, she's an incredible improviser. She came in and we rehearsed just a little bit, like, barely at all, and she came in the studio and laid these parts down, just improvising with the tracks.

It's really interesting that you brought a Gaelic infusion into this genre of music. I don't think that's ever been done before.

To this day I don't know what the words she sang meant, but I wanted the voice to be a ghost, and to just appear out of the blue. You know, you're listening to the album and you get through the first two songs then all of a sudden this voice comes in, and you go "whoa, wait, what was that?" and then it doesn't appear again on the next track but it's hidden deeper in the record.

"I feel like every band has a life."

Do you have a favorite piece?

It changes. After a record's done every once in a while I'll put it on, but during the process of getting an album from point A to point Z, you know, I've listened to that shit sooooo much. And I really got into the idea of how this record was going to sound. For one, this record isn't mastered. Most albums are mastered and leveled out, but this one, I went to Vancouver to John Rabham, a great engineer, and we spent two days just tweaking it and Really listening to it, which is what you do with a studio recording you know? It's like a painting, you know, this thing needs to be crystallized. Somebody hopefully will listen to this over and over and over again, and all those little things will be what makes it come alive for somebody who is listening to it. It's the stuff nobody wants to know about.

So you're happy with the sound you've found?

It's not a completed journey yet, we get to go out on tour in October, and then we'll really get into it. This is the first step in hopefully a longer evolution. It'll have a life. I find that bands have a life.

I would definitely agree with you there.

Well it's like they go along and they develop and then they need to rest and sometimes you get back to them or you don't. I find this trio interesting right now because we haven't really played a lot of shows yet, we haven't been on stage night after night but we've got a good little tour lined up for October and it's exciting.

At this point in your career you've basically done everything. This isn't even close the the first free jazz album you've played on, but by taking the helm for the first time do you feel a bigger responsibility to guide the music?

Well with V16 I kind of set it up so that it WAS my band but it really WASN'T my band, you know? And this right now IS my band.

Where your band-mates are much younger do you sort of instinctively take on the leadership role?

Yeah, and I hadn't done that for a very long time. I had a band when I was in Germany called UFB, and they were real young, and for a while it sort of felt like a similar situation. But what the trio is hopefully going to evolve into is that it'll be my band without it being my band.

All I've tried to do is say "Alright, here is the direction I really hear and I really want to go in." At first they were kind of like, "hmmm... I don't know..." and I had to say "I KNOW you don't know, I don't know either, really, but let's keep heading there, I think we'll get there." And we did.

There's an awful lot of trust involved.

There is, but they're such brilliant players, such honest players that even though it wasn't easy the first week, and this wasn't an easy album to record, we worked real hard to get to where we wanted. If it has anything, it doesn't sound like any other band.

It most definitely does not sound like any other band.

Yeah! And that's cool! Colin Mackenzie used to say to me, "You're a sonic shape shifter, man, every time you're doing something sonically, you shift shapes." And that's ok.

You know, there's some songs on there where the drums are just totally minimal, like I'll drop out for four or five minutes, but I really love that because to me, what happens is death, which I guess is part of being a leader.

I think drummers have to realize that we're arrangers, you know, and one of the choices when you're playing is deciding when not to play. Drummers are arrangers, man, we arrange the piece, we control the volume level. I was just up in Banff teaching and I told all these drummers, "Look man, with drums you have all of this power, you can make the piece louder, softer, end, begin, where things come in, everything. Even in pop music." So I think when I approached the record it's like, I don't need the drums everywhere. If you listen to A Woman Who Wants To Waltz on the album, all the drums do on the whole fucking track is go "Boom........Chhhhh.........Chhhhhh......... Boom...........Chhhhh...........Chhhhhh" I think I play one part at the bridge where I do one different hit.

How would someone who doesn't have your level of technique go about developing the abstract component to their playing?

Well it depends what you mean by technique. I think there is a certain point where you realize that you've played enough literal or straight time, that the natural evolution of that is to try and find a way to imply that time without playing it. So in one way I'm playing really really straight, but I'm making it sound as abstract as possible. Breaking down parts, playing sections of them, and that's where the real practice is, realizing where time comes from. Realizing that time has to be internalized and then what you hear on the drums is the sound of the internalized time. But a lot of times we get that ass-backwards, we think by hitting the drum we're playing time, but it's not that way. Does that make sense?

Now the last time I was here we talked about your relationship with your mentor, Joe Morello, who has since passed on. If you could sum up everything you learned from Joe back then, what is the stuff that still sticks with you today?

Probably the most important thing he taught me was that the only important reason for having technique is to serve the music. He used to say that over and over. As well as the physical skills he taught me that allow me to be my age and continue playing. I mean he was 81 and he was still playing.

I think he gave me a great gift as a teacher because he didn't try to shape me musically, he let me do my own thing, but he shaped my hands and everything. We became good friends afterwards, and he was always on that thing about serving the music. It's one of those things where it's like, who cares if you're the fastest drummer in the world, big fucking deal. Sooner or later there will be someone faster then you. But just imagine at the time Morello was at his peak, there was NO ONE faster, or stronger than him. He came along and he changed drum technique forever.

I wish somebody would go back and take his live drum solos off his records and put them out as a volume of work. Just that contribution of all of those solos, it's timeless. It would be an incredible volume of work. He never did anything of his own, and I think that's a shame. He made a tremendous contribution to the instrument, and to the music and to me personally, you know, but he was always about serving the music.

It's a pretty humble stance considering he had the most technical ability of anyone at the time.

Yeah, but it's because he realized what it was for, you know? He was quite a, uh, quite a drumist, hah.

You can listen to Jerry Granelli Trio's Let Go, as well as many other Granelli releases, on his Banddcamp site. Or click HERE for a current list of upcoming dates.

BDK Dates

2011-06-10T07:18:00.001-07:00

photo : Chelle Wooten

I've got various shows this summer with different acts. If anyone is interested in seeing me play here is what I have for the season.

With KUATO

June 11th @ Gus's Pub (Halifax NS) w/ Union Of The Snake, Stalwart Sons

August 5th @ 1313 Hollis (Halifax NS) w/ TBA (Summer EP Release)

*August 12th @ The Capital (Fredericton NB) w/ Force Fields, Slate Pacific

August 13th @ Messtival (Anagance NB) w/ TBA

*confirmation pending

With Quiet Parade

June 23rd - Governors Pub (Sydney NS) w/ The Details

June 24th - Gus' Pub (Halifax NS) w/ The Details, Sleepless Nights

June 25th - Baba's Lounge (Charlottetown PE) w/ The Details, The North Lakes

June 26th - Plan B (Moncton NB) w/ The Details, Colonial Quarrels

With AA Wallace

June 18th - Midsummer Madness Festival (Kingston NB) w/ Scientists of Sound, Three Sheet

July 1st - Folly Fest (Gagetown NB) w/ Hey Ocean, Olympic Symphonium, Paper Lions

July 22nd - Evolve Festival (Antigonish NB) w/ Edward Sharpe, Man Man, Fred Penner

With Sleepless Nights

June 24th - Gus' Pub (Halifax NS) w/ Quiet Parade, The Details

This seems to be the summer of Festivals which is great because I love playing outside. Also, if it rains I wont have to worry about shocks, because I don't have to plug anything in. My biggest problem will be water splattering in my mouth when I rock out.

Amateur Exploits

2011-06-07T19:13:00.001-07:00

Still-shot from Lasse Gjertsen's percussive viral video, Amateur.

**Note** Around a year ago I emailed Modern Drummer Magazine some of my writing and asked about maybe writing something for them in the future and they were very encouraging and open to the idea, so I wrote a piece on the growing popularity of abstract kinds of percussion in popular music and some recent examples I found interesting. In the end they liked the piece but didn't think it fit in with the way the magazine is geared and asked if I could make it a little more into a "how to" piece. I got lazy and didn't alter it, and it sat dormant in a folder until I just remembered it.

The big thrill for me wasn't that I got to maybe be published in MD (although it's still something I'd like to do), it was that I had an excuse to interview Chad VanGaalen, whom I am a big fan of and who was a big inspiration for this article.

I thought I'd bring it out because I worked hard on it at the time, and it would be a shame if it just disappeared sometime when my hard drive crashes and I'm too lazy to retrieve it, so here it is.

Throughout the history of drumming, the most talented players have always been the ones to push the boundaries of the art of drumming. When Dave Brubeck came home from a US State Department tour of Europe and Asia, he wanted to write music in the odd time signatures he had heard throughout the villages and towns during his travels. He hired Joe Morello as the man to work these time signatures into something tangible on the drum kit. As a result, Time Out went on to sell millions of copies and open drummers’ minds to a completely different way of interpreting rhythm. One year later Billy Higgins and Ed Blackwell pushed things even further by playing completely out of time on Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz, an accomplishment whose influence continues today in the avant-garde movement.

As years went on, drummers always came along and made important contributions to the craft. Players like Jaki Leibezeit from Can and Alan Myers from Devo would influence a whole new crop of drummers, but towards the end of the 90’s something changed. Home recording gear was not only becoming easier to access -- mostly due to a significant drop in price -- but the Internet was also making it easier to deliver your music to a wider audience. The traditional sound of a drum kit on independent recordings was replaced by electronic samples and homegrown means of percussion, something for a bedroom recording artist that was easier to record and manipulate. All drummers at some point have encountered the old adage of “anyone can play the drums”. It’s a statement usually meant as a joke or to offend, but by approaching percussion from a different angle, artists everywhere are proving it to be true.

Chad VanGaalen is a critically acclaimed songwriter from Canada who has taken home recording to a new level. The press photo for his album Soft Airplanes features VanGaalen in front of a Frankestein’ed mound of drums and percussion instruments duct-taped and wired together with various mallets and gizmos popping out at every direction. For people searching for new and interesting sounds, it’s candy for the ears. His songs are often dark and murky pieces with enough structure and melody to attract the average music fan on the first listen, and contain enough interesting sounds and arrangements to keep even the most elitist music fan coming back for more.

“Home recording has changed a lot since I have been doing it, starting out with a couple of boom boxes,” he says. “I was really limited to how hissy stuff started getting. Now everyone has laptops with pimped out digital 24 tracks on them so the sky’s the limit.”

While some artist see the limitations of bedroom recording as constrictive, VanGaalen uses it as a way to re-think percussion.

“If you have a small home studio in a bedroom it’s probably not an option to set up a fully mic’ed kit, so you are forced to use different ways to get approximately the same sound or possibly a better sound if you’re lucky.”

Chad is proof that with a little imagination, you can create memorable parts regardless of skill.

“I have no formal drum training,” he says, “my drumming influences come from listening to Sonic Youth records over and over”.

Chad with his creation

Bedroom recording artists aren’t the only people making leaps in the world of percussion. In 2003 the critically acclaimed, multi-platinum Icelandic rock band Sigur Rós recorded Ba Ba Ti Ki Di Do, a 20 minute piece of music to accompany a dance piece by Merce Cunnigham. The piece is littered with the pitter-patter of a percussion instrument composed of several ballet slippers and tap dancing shoes. The shoes are rarely played in any discernable time, and they are the only rhythmic accompaniment in the entire piece. It’s an abstract approach to percussion that has long been around in experimental recordings, but that has rarely been used in popular music.

The popularity of viral videos is also bringing a visual element into the mix. In Lasse Gjertsen’s short film “Amateur”, Lasse used short video clips of himself hitting individual parts of a drum kit then applied his skills as a video editor to create and shape a rhythm, eventually doing the same thing with various notes on a piano and creating a song. Gjertsen can neither play the piano nor the drums, which is what makes this video so remarkable. By breaking down rhythm into sections of single hits and building it into a piece of music, Lasse proves that you don’t need years of practice to develop a keen sense of rhythm. By approaching it from a different angle and using the skills available to him he wrote a song without ever learning an instrument. Despite the title, the video is no amateur endeavor. To date it has received nearly twelve million views.

Other artists manage to take traditional approaches to percussion but with unorthodox objects. In Julian Smith’s “Techno Jeep,” a group of people uses the doors and internal sounds of a standard Jeep to create a multi-layered rhythm. Throw in some snazzy video edits and a little choreography and you have another successful viral video, 2.5 million views and counting.

It’s because percussion itself is such an accessible art form that these advancements are possible. Anything with a surface can be used in some incarnation as an instrument. Once the fundamental notes are learned on instruments like the piano or the saxophone, you are then taught a series of rules that adhere to structure and tonality. These rules are not infrangible, but only the most skilled and experienced players can bend and break them and still keep the music coherent. When it comes to percussion, the only limit imposed on your playing is your imagination; any oddball pattern can be used as a foundation for a larger musical piece.

An art form needs to always be re-inventing itself in order to stay relevant. If advancements in our craft by others who aren’t traditional drummers by are ignored, we run the risk of rendering ourselves obsolete. Drummers need to find a way to approach their instrument with the right mixture of technical ability and abstract thinking in order to push forward. If a homemade instrument played by someone with no training can be used as a rhythmic base for a song, imagine what someone who has in-depth knowledge of dynamics, rudiments and complicated patterns, as well as the ability to play them could do. Amateurs have proven that there are unlimited ways to interpret rhythm and structure; it’s up to drummers to apply it. Anyone can play the drums it’s true, but a drummer with the correct sense of creativity and ability will never have to defend himself, their playing will speak for itself.

You know what they say about guys with big drum kits?

2011-06-06T13:01:00.000-07:00

Small Toms.

I’m going to go on a bit of a rant here for a minute, but before I do I’m going to tell you a little story.

When I was a kid I had a drum kit. My best friend Andre, whom taught me how to play lived just a few houses down the road and also had a drum kit. Sometimes, on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon when we had hours to kill, he would show up to my house with his drums crammed into his van, and we would spend an hour or so mashing them together into one monster hybrid of a kit, and then spend the next three to four hours taking turns playing the shit out of it. It was interesting, it was creative, and it was fun as hell. The idea that maybe you would find a unique combination of items placed in a unique way so as only you can play a one of a kind rhythm or pattern is intriguing to say the least, sometimes I would just flail my arms around back and forth and just see what I could hit with no concept in mind. It was a hell of a way to spend an evening.

Putting the thing together was half the fun. Constructing a percussion shrine that loomed over you as you sat down to it. Searching for the most correct position for pedals and trinkets was a challenge you had to keep them within reach but out of the way. Thousands of variables for optimum performance, these are the things that make Neil Peart’s jeans tight.

Well, that and space-robes.

So before I get going, please know that I understand the desire to build the dream kit. A shining example of one mans lifelong creative pursuits and financial independence. A kit that speaks volumes about you and your talent by just existing, a kit that will make the local drummers that open for you on tour wet their Lars Ulrich mini-shorts in fear -- A behemoth of your own creation. I know, I’ve been through it.

You used my name bro, that's fifty cents.

This isn’t even about the stay at home guys that have a huge set of mid life crisis DW’s in a sweaty man cave in the basement where they bang along to old King Crimson albums on Sunday mornings when the wife’s gone to the market. Whatever those guys want to do is their business. This is for the guys that are really serious about wanting to get out there and play, and balk at the idea that anything other than talent could play a factor in why their phone isn't ringing.

I don't care how you have justified bringing a giant hulking drum-kit on the road up to this point, but from now on leave Drumzilla at home please and thank you, because it makes you seem like a jackass.

Fuck you buddy, I look cool as hell.

Here are a bunch of reasons why having an oversized drumkit is suicide for anyone wanting to be a gigging/touring musician. You might not agree with me, but this might just be why Thom Yorke hasn't called you yet.

First - Practicality.

Look drummers, let’s face it, we’re already on the shit list for having the most amount of stuff to carry in. Everyone else can get their shit into the bar in two trips while we’re on our fourth trying to not pinch our thumbs between two pieces of hardware. Add that to the fact that they will resent us when get way more chicks at the show (you know, because we're drummers) and all of a sudden we’re prime candidates for getting stuck sleeping on the floor and sitting in the bitch-seat at every chance.

What I’m saying is, travel light my friend. Having 6 cymbals and a set of blocks might be fun to plink around with at home, but when you bring all that stuff along you’re just making way more work for yourself. Not to mention you're upping the chances you’re going to leave something behind on those nights where packing up is the furthest thing from your mind. Be real, no one is going to be happy when they have to turn around and go back to the venue because you left your djembe behind the soundboard. It’s also downright inconsiderate and rude to your fellow passengers. It takes up way more extra space in the van/trailer, which could be better used for stuff like merch or booze (or if your band is creative, merchbooze).

Or shit, how about just having somewhere to put your legs up? The space you get is small enough, nobody needs weird hardware arms poking them or tambourines jingling around when you're trying to nap.

Try this -- When it’s time to leave, start with your standard kit (kick, snare, rack, floor tom, high hats, crash, ride) and then, granted there is still lots of room, maybe take one or two things you like to play around with (an extra snare or cymbal, or a electric drum pad, etc..) and leave the rest at home. Let HOW you play define your talent, not WHAT you play. You're band-mates won't thank you I'm sure, but you can act a little more smug knowing you sacrificed for them.

Bad for PR

Here’s a scenario. Your favorite band is coming to town and when their support act broke up and dropped off the tour, your band got the local slot. You’ve never been so excited. You guys have been practicing all week to get real tight in order to impress them. If you play well and schmooze well enough, you might be able to finagle your way onto a couple more shows.

Now, how do you think that band will feel towards yours when they show up to sound check only to find it’s been pushed back an hour because they haven’t gotten your drums checked yet? You’ve already put a sour taste in their mouth and you haven’t even met them yet.

Really? You saw Vedder backstage? Did he ask about me?

Big kits take longer to load in, set up, and to sound check. It’s just logistics. You give me the fastest drum setter-upper in the world setting up Mike Portnoy’s kit and some sixteen year old neophyte setting up a standard one, and the kid will win every time. You want the respect of your fellow touring bands? Set up in a timely manner, don’t dick around during sound check and keep things running on time. Then if you blow them away during your show they will be a lot more likely to talk to you about it.

Bad for the show

I’ve run into countless drummers using oversized kits on shows with three or four bands and there’s one trend I noticed that makes things worse than they already are. Most often these guys are both insistent that they use their own drums, and very hesitant to let anyone else on their throne.

I dunno man, these high hats are vintage.

Let me put it bluntly. If you’re going to be a big enough dick to fuck up changeover so you can get your heap of a drum kit on stage, you should at least be prepared to let the next few bands use it so the show can remain somewhat on schedule. Taking thirty to forty-five minutes to set up between bands can really make the crowds decision to stick it out for the rest of the night or call it a night, go home and stream TV until they pass out. Ideally you want each band to be ready by the time the smokers saunter back into the venue from the previous set, because unless you’re AC fucking DC people aren’t going to stick around while you place your chimes.

The best rock shows aren’t just a series of sets, they are nights that flow perfectly with the will of the crowd. The bands start when everyone wants them to (and finishes when they want them to as well). Everyone has good sets, but good shows are a little more rare, so don’t ruin it by wishing everyone to indulge you without giving them something in return.

This isn’t the O2 Arena

Stage size at most venues is sometimes passable at best for even one full band, but indie rock shows will hardly ever have just one band, so the stage usually ends of a mess of chords, amps and pedals. Sticking drum add-ons all around can start to take up much more room than you are allotted, with cymbal stand booms and legs sticking out among the periphery you’re just begging for someone to kick over your Octobans.

I always laugh when I see a drum kit so big that the rest of the band has to set up and play on the floor in front of the stage. All I can think of of is how indulgent and egotistical you would have to be to not see how ridiculous it looks. I have no problems judging clueless musicians.

I think the go-go dancers can fit in front of the Marshall.

What it comes down to is this. If you have the ambition to really take drumming to even a semi-professional level but you can’t represent your playing unless you use your super customized mega-kit 2000, then you need to take a step back and sort out what’s actually important. Versatility is an asset, take yourself out of your comfort zone and minimize as much as possible. Use a little to say a lot. Or if you’re going to lug your 12 piece monster to open for my band and insist you use it, at least let me take a crack at it. You can’t bring a grenade launcher to the gun range and not expect everyone to ask to shoot it.

Tom Petty - Long After Dark

2011-03-21T09:39:00.001-07:00

I love the way Stan Lynch plays drums on Tom Petty albums, and when Howie Epstein came in to play bass on Long After Dark they really learned how to play off each other well, giving the songs a stronger base than on previous records.

Lynch gave a little more to Tom Petty's songs than he gets credit for. Petty is an incredible songwriter, but Lynch really gave the songs their drive, keeping momentum rolling. Even songs that weren't really single-worthy still play well even today because Lynch and Epstein really kept things pushing forward. Finding Out is one of the best songs on this record, and it has little to do with Petty's vocals and a lot to do with the band just killing it for four minutes.

Lynch seemed to have a good ear for when to throw himself around the kit and when to hold back. Hell, the beat on You Got Lucky never strays for the whole song, but some well timed crash hits bring in all the dynamic that was needed.

For a guy who, at the time, looked like a pretty big cheeseball he sure played the drums like a champion.

Mullets aside, the albums Stan Lynch did with Tom Petty will probably be listened to for hundreds of years. Sure Tom Petty's songs were great, but his music wouldn't last if he hadn't put together such a shit hot band. Every element was taken care of, and when you don't have to worry about your backing band you can really focus on the songs a lot better.

If you're reading this and thinking Tom Petty was a lame-o just remember that when Stan Lynch left Tom Petty's band the first guy to cover for him was Dave Grohl, and not post-Nirvana-Kurts-gone-I-can-be-free Dave Grohl, but 1993 era, long haired, I-need-to-make-sure-everything-I-do-is-cool Dave Grohl, which was a much harder Dave Grohl to convince. Here is video proof.

And here is some video of Stan Lynch rockin' the shit.

Mogwai - Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will

2011-02-27T06:17:00.001-08:00

When will Mogwai make a bad record? I have long wanted to write about Martin Bulloch, but despite his awesome playing, I couldn't find anything on previous Mogwai records that I hadn't already talked about with some other similar players. Instead of forcing it, I figured I would just wait, and lo and behold, Mogwai released Hardcore Will Never Die But You Will and this post practically writes itself.

On previous records, Martin would usually adjust the volume of his playing to change and affect the mood. Quiet playing for quiet parts, loud playing for loud parts. Simple really, and effective. But with HWNDBYW he plays hard, with consistent volume and relies more on the technique to push things forward, and it's fucking great. Take a song like Mexican Grand Prix which starts with a bare kick/snare pattern. It's already pretty punchy and has a lot of momentum, and then simply by adding the high hat he takes it so much further. Nicely placed high hat flourishes and snare/cymbal hits keep things interesting, but it's always grounded. This is a drummer who we've been able to hear mature over the last few Mogwai records, and it's a big contributor to why Mogwai are still an interesting and relevant band sixteen years into their career.

We get sort of a throwback to early Mogwai with songs like Rano Pano and Death Waves, which have pretty consistent guitar/bass patterns, allowing Martin a little more room to play with the timing and drive of his patterns. It's incredible how rooted his feet and snare had stay while he travels around his drums, the man is a rock.

Martin seems to have developed a better feel for softness as well, giving us some really lush brush playing of Letters To The Metro. It's one of the slowest tracks, but it is one of my favorites.

Bulloch is an example of a good drummer taking a proper look at his rhythmic position in his band, and over time finding a way to let his personality and style shine through the limitations, becoming a great drummer. I don't think there is a bad track on this record, and it's insane to think that a band that has been together for sixteen years is still recording some of the best music of their careers.

Mogwai and Lady Gaga are both playing in Montreal on April 25th. I'm driving up from Halifax. I'm going to let you guess who I'm going to go see.

BDK News - Kuato Winter EP

2011-02-08T06:39:00.000-08:00

My instrumental band Kuato have released our second EP. It has 3 songs and is 30 minutes long. You can get it for free from the Acadian Embassy.

The Holy Shroud - Ghost Repeaters

2011-02-07T08:03:00.000-08:00

Loel Campbell is the real fucking deal. Genuine talent mixed with imagination and stamina. I've seen him play fill in sets for Kary and Trephines, two bands that are part of every Yarmouth County musician's DNA, and whom have albums that have aged better than most. I've seen him play countless times with Wintersleep and Contrived, his two main outfits for a while. I've seen him take part in the blossoming of Holy Fuck, the little band that could. I've seen him double up on the drums for an entire Jon Epworth set (alongside Mike Belyea, whom I've written about already. You can watch a clip of it here). Shit, I've seen Loel play more shows than any other drummer. I'm sure no one will be surprised to see me writing about him.

I was so close to writing about one of the Contrived records, but I just knew that I would start writing and get lost on how to sum up how fucking awesome those records/that band are. There is just too much history there to cram it into a blog post.

The Holy Shroud's history is much simpler.

1/2 North Of America +

1/2 Contrived

= One hell of a rock band.

When The Holy Shroud formed I had just started to come to the city for shows, and I saw them play at The Idiot with Radarfame. They came out all dressed in white with white ski masks on and they ripped through their set flailing around and blowing everyone away. It looked sort of this.

As far as drumming goes, this is Loel at his most spastic and uninhibited. The energy never wanes, but his playing never loses focus. He is completely locked in with Mike Bigelow's bass, and this record is one of many examples of why those two were the most sought after rhythm section in Halifax when they lived here. The amount of sweat that went into these songs is unimaginable. For a brief period The Holy Shroud were the best band in Halifax, even opening up for The Arcade Fire during their legendary performance at The Marquee for the Halifax Pop Explosion. We might only have one full length record to remember them by, but what an album it is.

The thing about Loel's drumming is that it has that little extra touch that can never be emulated. You can always tell when it's him on the skins, but you can't pinpoint how. I think one of my favorite songs is Landmarks to Postmarks, where the drums and guitars are totally in sync, only to have the guitars drop out and the drums take the lead. The rolls in Calling In Confederate Debts are also lightning fast and perfectly executed, candy to a drummers ear.

If you have been paying attention to anything musically you'll know that Loel is constantly breaking new ground with Wintersleep (the band just performed on David Letterman, the first for a Nova Scotian band) and if you've done any research you know about Contrived and all of the Dependent Music bands he was involved in. I'm hoping that if you've never heard this album you'll seek it out, because it's a treasure worth finding. The amount of quality albums Loel has played on is massive, and it gets larger every year. Hopefully this one won't get lost in the past.

Led Zeppelin - in Through The Out Door

2011-01-25T06:38:00.000-08:00

I know that John Bonham is not an underrated or neglected part of drum history. Hell, if you play the drums and you don't know who John Bonham is I don't need to tell you you're an idiot, I'm sure you'll figure it out soon enough. I'm not writing about John Bonham on here to talk about his influence or importance, that's been discussed to exhaustion in every god damn drum magazine and forum in existence. I'm here to tell you that John Bonham the drummer may have died at 32, but John Bonham the artist was just an infant, barely two years old when he was taken from us, and that's the biggest tragedy. Let me explain.

In Through The Out Door is my favorite Led Zeppelin album. I'm sure that's some sort of blasphemy somewhere, but fuck you I think about this stuff a lot more than most other people do. You see, this is the first album where Led Zeppelin had really stepped out from under the safety blanket of the blues and really made something innovative stylistically. They had proven they could wail on the last seven records, but the songs on In Through... have a certain maturity to them, all the power and energy of the previous albums but much more focused thematically, concentrating of feel and dynamic more than virtuosic playing.

A big part of this can be attributed to Page and Bonham becoming unreliable due to their various addictions, and the writing responsibility falling mostly onto John Paul Jones and Robert Plant, who had always had input but never this much. The previous songs had mostly always relied on riffs, with everything else coming to life around them. Until now Bonham had been used to the freedom of Page's parts. Page was a master of creating space for his band mates to work their way into, it's one of the best parts about his playing. As a drummer, when you play along to guitar riffs, there is usually quite a few pockets of space where you can throw in little frills and fills, which Bonham had been doing quite well up to this point. Once Jones took the reigns writing parts for In Through The Out Door, the songs became very bass-prominent and it sort of lasso'd in John's playing. Jones has a great ability to keep things grounded, but his playing is very thick. Bonham couldn't start throwing in drum flourishes everywhere because there was simply no room for them.

This could have killed his inspiration, but instead Bonham used this musical confinement to hone his skills under duress. By this point he had really carved out his own niche, and he worked within the limitations set by Jones while still holding onto his style. The result is an album full of really interesting rhythms, played with the ferocity and skill of his previous material. When he does get a little room he makes it count, working in fills as extensions of his rhythms. There's parts in Carouselambra that are just out of this world, better than anything he had laid down before.

It's not that Bonham hadn't done anything impressive before this point, but this was the first time he was forced to change his approach, and instead of throwing in the cards he really shaped it into something unique. It's like throwing a painter a lump of clay and saying, "there, what can you do with that?" He always had his own style, but this was the first glimpse of personality to come from his playing. He died shortly after this album was released, and it's the only glimpse we have into where his drumming would have progressed.

I can't help but wonder what kind of drummer he would would have been on the next three records the way I wonder what Albert Camus' books would have been like if he hadn't died in that car crash. Sometimes it's best not to think of these things.

The Boredoms - 77 Boadrum DVD

2011-01-17T06:38:00.000-08:00

In the summer of 2007 legendary Japanese noise rock group The Boredoms hand picked 77 drummers from around the world, brought them to New York and set them up in a park for a one of a kind performance. The drums were set up in a spiraling motion, and patterns would begin in the center and travel outward until the entire group played in unison. With a set of colored sticks with various meanings, The Boredoms would orchestrate the entire performance from an elevated stage in a middle, and for an hour and a half the city of New York was witness to one of the loudest, most powerful performances ever recorded, whether they wanted to be or not. This DVD is a must-see for any drummer, just ogling at all the different kits they wrangled up could take up a lot of time.

If you're wondering what 77 drums sets look like in spiral, well, here ya go.

This DVD is a mixture of documentary footage and performance footage, and it gives great insight into how this giant project was executed. If you have a surround sound system, the drums will swirl around you, putting you right in the middle of the performance.

This is something that will probably never happen again, and is a true example of drumming as an art. When things really get going you can hear the true force that exists in drums and it must have been heard for miles. If you watch closely you will see a crowd full of people in tune with what's going on, and if you look closer you'll see one hippy in a bandana and tie-dyed shirt just losing his mind trying to grasp what's happening.

I mean c'mon.

duuuuuuude.

drums.

Dire Straits - Brothers In Arms

2010-12-27T04:51:00.000-08:00

The best part about getting further and further away from the 80's is that we can finally listen back and really sort out the gems from the turds. You have to appreciate the 80's for what it was; a time where technology in the industry was moving much faster than the participants and where excess and grandiosity were the way of the world. Never have bands been so removed from their audiences as the entire Decade of 1980. Any organic part of a song was basically rung out with digital effects until it had almost no character at all. They were selling millions of albums and making billions of dollars off of artists for the first time, and the bigwigs sort of went a little nuts. It started with Frampton and it sort of ended with Nirvana, but for a good 12 years or so the music industry behaved like the son of a Saudi Prince attending university in another continent, shoving money around just for the sheer pleasure of it.

My point is, a lot of the influence and importance the 80's actually had wasn't really apparent until now, twenty years later. Once people finally got a handle on how to manipulate the technology into progressing the art, things improved drastically. Engineers had the time to work the kinks out of the recording software, and musicians had time to figure out which effects are good (FUZZ) and which effects are dumb (PHASER). With regard to recording technique and style, if we never had Dire Straits' Brothers In Arms, we might not have had Kid A. Think about that, hmm? Brothers In Arms is impressive even in it's dryly recorded, synth-infused world. Great songs will work no matter what you do to them, and this record is a great example of that.

Recently it was disclosed that after longtime drummer Terry Williams couldn't hack it, jazz session master Omar Hakim was brought in and recorded every song in two days. The only piece of Williams' recordings left on the album are the echo-y, crescendo drums at the start of Money For Nothing, which I have to admit, are pretty fucking cool.

Hakim's drumming is a lot more practical, albeit necessary for the type of album Brothers In Arms is, and its definitely part of the reason this album was so popular that it put the entire CD manufacturing business on hold when it was released. The straight, minimalist style of drumming on So Far Away and Money For Nothing still feels like rock drumming but it's never bombastic, it's always even and concise.

The second half of the record is more folk/world music influenced, but instead of being too jazzy Hakim plays more the way Nick Mason would; sparse, but straight and dynamic. Well thought out hits and patterns let Mark Knopfler's talent as a songwriter shine through. With a laid back approach on the bass by John Illsley, you get a tinge of cool guitar stuff too.

It's kind of nice to hear a different rhythmic approach to Dire Straits' songs. Terry Williams had his own merits, but it shows a lot of character to step aside and let another man have at it for an album. Williams returned for the subsequent tour and catered his playing on these songs according to Omar's style.

I'm not sure I could be that passive, but I'm glad he was.

NOTE: These videos are of Terry Williams playing Omar Hakim's patterns.

Indie Spotlight - Orphan Choir - S/T

2010-12-08T14:49:00.000-08:00

I've always had a lot of respect for Nate Gelinas. Orphan Choir were one of the first bands I met on tour that I really felt a connection with, musically and socially. Nate played the drums with force and precision, and he's one of the lucky guys who just looks cool playing the drums.

We picked up the Orphan Choir vinyl last time we were in Windsor, Ontario. That was six months ago and I still listen to it constantly. Songs like the Night Nurse are just so rich in tone and energy, with Gelinas' playing just hard enough to be noticed, but never pushing others aside.

The way he locks in with the bass most of the time is reminiscent of mid seventies studio-rock, but his hands keep things chaotic enough that it never feels overdone. Nate does a lot of stuff on this record that is really stylish, and it's that style that sort of holds the album together thematically for me. The guitars and vocal styles change quite a bit, but the drums keep it all kind of cemented.

Sure, maybe I could use my blog to give props to people and bands that I know personally, but where is the fun in that? Besides, I just said I respected him, I never said I liked him. Nate Gelinas is actually a huge asshole.

I'm kidding.

Please don't hurt me Nate.

Young Widows - Old Wounds

2010-11-30T07:45:00.000-08:00

The drumming on this Young Widows album is unique because in essence it is very minimalist, but there is so much power behind it you don't really notice. Take the first track for example, Took a Turn. The drums come in nice and solid with a slow and steady rock beat, but Jeremy McMonigle chops it up and drops out parts here and there, accenting the few hits he makes. I found a Youtube video of someone playing the drums along to this part, and he does a great job of coming in and out at the perfect time, so you can see what I'm talking about.

The tension in McMonigle's playing is held in perfect balance with short bursts of release, it's like he's riding his drums at the rodeo and trying to keep them roped in the whole time. Every shot is so forceful and precise, there is not a hint of excessiveness in his playing.

He also has a keen ability to throw in things like quick cymbal chokes or off-time rhythms, and in 21st Century Invention we get a little taste of both. You can tell Jeremy is playing a set of drums with massive toms, and I hope that means we're starting to get more into the John Bonham style of a huge drum sound, rather than the trend of the mid-90s to have really tight, quick sounding drums. A drum has a tone and a decay people, and both sound fine if you record them properly. One thing is for sure, McMonigle is beating the piss out of his drums, and no matter how big they are, they sound like their 2 stories high.

I saw Young Widows at the Halifax Pop Explosion probably two years ago, and I saw them blow a roomful of minds. Most people were either there to see Canadian math-rock heroes Metz, or the wild band from Isreal everyone was talking about (Monotonix), but since then I hear mention of the Young Widows set more than either of them.

I hope someday you'll be at some random show where Young Widows is playing and when they start their first song you'll think, "Ok, this is pretty good, I'll stick around." And then they'll kick on their stage lights, and you'll feel like your being blinded by some post-hardcore alien spaceship, and for the next 45 minutes you don't know what the hell is going on, but it's awesome.

Maserati - Pyramid Of The Sun

2010-11-28T07:00:00.000-08:00

While I already wrote about Jerry Fuchs' playing on the Maserati record Inventions For The New Season, it should be known that the new album, Pyramid Of The Sun has recently been released and is his last performance in studio before his untimely death.

The pulse and style of Fuch's playing is something that will resonate for years to come, and the band were right to take their time with the post-production on this record to make sure the quality of his drumming is matched by all other aspects of the recordings. He was a well timed, hard hitting, drumming machine, and he will be missed.

Go pick up this album and pay your respects.

Komeda - The Genius of Komeda

2010-11-15T15:11:00.000-08:00

While it's fairly pompous to label yourselves geniuses on your own album, I gotta admit that this Komeda record is fairly infectious. I threw it on after finding it in a pile of junk CD's someone gave me, I figured I'd see if anything caught my interest before I dumped the lot of them. I noticed that the album was produced by Pelle Henricsson who had produced the masterpiece that is Refused's The Shape Of Punk To Come, so I figured I would give it a shot. Warm, lush indie-pop sounds hit my ears, reminiscent of other European pop bands like Stereolab and Laakso, but with a slightly darker twist. The songs take a steady rhythmic pulse and expand on it with jazz-like melodies and sultry vocals, a nice blend of everything.

Jonas Holmburg's drumming spans lots of styles, from the noisy straight rock beats on More Is More to the latin infused patterns on Rocket Plane (Music To The Moon) that build and swell with well placed cymbal crashes.

Boogie Woogie/Rock and Roll has a really cool New-Wave feel to it but with much smoother rhythms, Holmburg's playing never jolts you, it always feels very methodical. In Disko he takes a few bars to really play some cool off time shots, and they feel as organic as everything else.

Maybe I should have listened to more CD's in that pile before tossing them, I could have found a bunch of hidden gems.

Nah, probably not. One out of twelve ain't bad.

Most music sucks.

Joe Jackson - Look Sharp!

2010-11-02T07:18:00.000-07:00

I got this album from my landlord when he found out I was into records. He brought Look Sharp! over one day while doing some light repairs. I was a little put off, but he seems to know his stuff, so I put it on.

It turns out I like Joe Jackson. Who knew? You probably like him too. We've all heard Is She Really Going Out With Him? on the radio time and time again, and if your into metal you might know Anthrax's version of Got The Time, the last song on this record. Think about it, Joe Jackson was a pale englishman in a suit and tie, and of all bands, Anthrax wanted to play his music. You can imagine he probably had his shit together. The hits on this album aren't even the best part, there's some cool stuff all over this record, and Dave Houghton is nice little drummer discovery I've made because of it.

As with most New-wave drumming, Dave Houghton's playing reminds me a little of Pete Thomas on this album, but a little more focused. I find he's locked in a little more. on Happy Loving Couples he keeps his playing really minimal, the bare essentials required to keep things moving. Sunday Papers has a cool sort of swagger to it, but Houghton keeps it tight so that it never steps out of line. and Throw It Away is just a balls out rocker with a 60's psych feel to it. Houghton beats the hell out of his drums and manages to nail the stop before the chorus as tight as ever.

Houghton's drumming is a prefect example of a melding of the very precise 50s style rock drumming and the more bombastic style of the early 70s. Baby Stick Around or Pretty Girls could have easily come from Buddy Holly without really changing anything but the volume of the playing.

Houghton really shows his stuff during a break in the title track Look Sharp! He gets about 8 bars of a solo in over a unaccompanied staccato piano line, and it's a brief glimpse of his speed and technique.

Dave left Joe Jackson's band in 1980 but eventually returned years later and has been with Joe ever since. If you get the chance to see him play some of these song, take it. His minimalist approach to rock drumming is rarely seen in finer form than on some of these songs.

BDK News - Kuato EP

2010-10-28T07:41:00.001-07:00

An Instrumental band I play in called Kuato has just released our debut EP for free download.

You can get it from the snazzy new Acadian Embassy website.

Or you can listen to it on our Bandcamp Site.

If you enjoy it, please check us out on Facebook, where we will post upcoming shows.

BDK News

2010-10-25T07:13:00.000-07:00

I covered the Halifax Pop Explosion for Noisography this week. You can read my reviews here :

It was a hectic week but it was a lot of fun. Can't wait until next year.

Sleep - Volume One

2010-10-21T08:04:00.000-07:00

Chris Hakius of Sleep played drums the way elephants march through a swamp. It's slow, it's sludgy and it's fucking heavy as hell. This whole album is just one huge piece of Stoner metal magic. One of the things that defines his drumming on Volume One is the way he seems to play off the guitar more than the bass. Little guitar licks will be accented with ride bells or tom shots, and while he never seems to play something steady and rhythmic, there is this underlying feeling that he's just trudging through the muck with the rest of them.

It's heavy handed, drum pummeling goodness, and It's something I wish I could have seen live, even once. Drummers like this occupy a completely different realm than the usual rock or jazz guys, they play to parts rather than rhythms, and in Stoner metal when it works, it works great. Sleep put out great albums long after they broke up (Dopesmoker is something of a relic) but Volume One is where they really came into their sound, while making a lasting impact on the genre.

After Sleep disbanded Hakius took to the skins for Om until 2008. Sadly, he hasn't really been playing much since. When Sleep reunited for 2009's All Tomorrows Parties Hakius was there, but for 2010 Jason Roeder of Neurosis has taken his position. I can only hope he'll pop up in some band soon, guys like him don't come along too often.

BDK News - Maritime tour

2010-10-17T09:11:00.002-07:00

My new instrumental band will be playing a few select dates to introduce ourselves to the public and to launch Acadian Embassy, a label my roommate, Halifax is Burning host Trevor Murphy and I have started from our house. They are as follows :

Nov 11th - Halifax NS - Gus' Pub

Nov 12th - Fredericton NB - Gallery Connexion

Nov 13th - Charlottetown PEI - Alibi

Hope to see you there.

For additional information please see the Acadian Embassy Facebook Page, or follow us on Twitter.

Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet

2010-10-12T05:19:00.000-07:00

I would definitely call Bon Jovi a guilty pleasure of mine.

If I felt the least bit guilty.

You see, the 11 year old me wasn't really into Tortoise or Converge, he was into Bon Jovi, a lot. I even had limited edition 10 inch japanese singles, UK imports, everything. If it had to do with the Bonj, I had to have it. The funny thing is, when I look back, everything I did was a reaction to most things that my older/cooler best friend Andre was doing. He was into metal and played the drums, I wanted to be into metal and play the drums. Only difference was that he was always a step ahead of me. I was into Bon Jovi and he was into Metallica and Pantera. When I got around to them, he was into Sepultura and Slayer. Once I caught up, he was listening to Malevolent Creation and Cannibal Corpse and Death, and so forth.

When I eventually copied him and got a drum kit, We would go to each others house and just play drums all day. We had a ghetto blaster that could go loud enough, so we'd put on CD's and just take turns playing along. His band of choice was Metallica. Mine was, you guessed it, Bon Jovi.

The thing is, I'm not so convinced that its a bad thing that I grew up mimicking Tico Torres. He's pulled off some bad ass shit in his career. On Keep The Faith there is a 9 minute song called Dry County, and Tico just kills it the whole time. And don't get me started on Lay Your Hands On Me, that song is brilliant, the perfect rock song, Queen could have written it.

Now, my obsession with Bon Jovi didn't carry over into the post-Crush country music period (but I will say that not a lot of bands could have made such a successful transition from Metal to Country). The last album I bought was One Wild Night Live, and even that was more for my obsession with keeping catalogues complete, instead of a desire to actually hear it.

I was also older and my tastes sort of shot in a different direction, but i'll never turn my back on my roots. Bon Jovis music and Tico Torres' drumming are as much a part of me as some of the first friends I've had or the first books I've read. C'mon, all seriousness aside, Who wouldn't be inspired by this guy.

He looks like if John Malkovich and Fabio had a lovechild that could rock out on the drums while providing crisp, smooth back up vocals. He was definitely the total package. I mean look at those chimes.

Slippery When Wet might not be my favorite Bonj record, but it has all the hits, and that's where Tico is at his best. The guy knew how to play heavy handed, thick patterns that weren't too busy, because there needed to be room for all the other guys. Bon Jovi songs are so well structured it blows my mind. Tico had a way of playing a pattern through the verses, then shifting it just slightly for the chorus, but making it fee like something new altogether. He does it on Without Love, and it keeps that song from getting repetitive. On I'd Die For You He keeps things straight, then breaks into a Springsteen-esque snare beat, with the kick drum catching every bass note. Towards the end he starts doing some really interesting ride bell stuff, never holding up on his hard playing. I think what I like most about it is that a lot of eighties rock guys started to lighten up on their playing. Better microphones meant they didn't have to hit as hard to be heard. Not Tico though, he always beat the fuck out of his drums, and I like that.

My favorite song on this record is definitely Raise Your Hands. It's one of those eighties anthems that will just always be great. They also used it in Spaceballs, which is pretty epic.

I knew it was going to happen eventually, I was bound to write about Bon Jovi sometime soon. I guess going home this last weekend and playing a show to all the people that used to come to shows when I was a kid got me all nostalgic. Like old influences an friends, you should never forget where you came from, and what part it's played in your life.

There, now it's totally fine for you to admit you love Bon Jovi too.

BDK News

2010-10-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

I've been fairly busy debuting a new band and retiring an old one, so I haven't had much time to post stuff. If anyone is interested, HERE is a review and videos of two sets I played on Thursday, one with my new band and one with my old.

And here are some videos of The last Establishment show from The Red Knight in Yarmouth, courtesy of Lynn Hemeon of Yarmouthbands.com

BDK News - Establishment CD Release/Last Show

2010-10-07T06:12:00.000-07:00

Tonight at The Paragon, the first band I started when I moved to Halifax, The Establishment, will be releasing our second full length album. The CD's are of limited supply, so if you want one, get it fast. It sounds great and the CD's look pretty snazzy.

See?

Also, after a show tomorrow night in Yarmouth, we will be going on long hiatus. I've never properly retired a band before, and I'm pretty sad/excited about it.

You can read a review on Noiseography, and download a track from the album HERE.

You can read an interview with me in The Coast, talking about the band and the album, HERE.

You can check out the Facebook group for the show HERE, and talk about the show HERE.

I will also be debuting a new Instrumental band I play in, called Kuato. We will be on first.

See you there.

Indie Spotlight - The Wolfnote - Sacred Bodies

2010-09-29T11:51:00.000-07:00

I played a show with The Wolfnote a long time ago at the One World Cafe before it burned down. They were such a tight, erratic, exciting band to see at that point in my life, as I was just starting to get into playing shows. As a young drummer, watching Garret Kruger play drums was a complete lesson in intensity and endurance.

Ever see someone play drums and they just put so much into their playing that it looks like their about to pass out two songs in, and they maintain that look for a whole set? That takes skill. Kruger not only kept the energy up the whole time, but he played hard, fast and tight, never faltering. Drummers can often pull off that much energy live, but it's hard to make that carry across into recording. The playing on Sacred Bodies is a direct representation, and gives off the same erratic and focused vibe.

At the end of Rats Is Life Garrett keeps his kick drum pumping while bashing the shit out of everything else, and as it goes on forever he never loses track. By the time everything starts slowing and sludging down, he's on top of everything, keeping a lid on the madness. Holy Blood has some great correlation between the bass and drums, every chord change, every shift is caught and accented, with out making things feel jagged. Liars In Love is a great dance-punk anthem, and the way the drums play off the vocal add to the feel quite a bit. My favorite has to be I Wanna Be Your Matador, its straight up punk, tightened up by Garretts quick shots, and it's a fist pumping good time.

I sure hope The Wolfnote are hiding somewhere in a cave, rehearsing and recording and gearing up for another run out East. I'm not going to hold my breath though, something tells me that's not going to happen.

I couldn't find any live footage of songs from this album, but here is some from 2 years before it's release.

BDK News

2010-09-27T07:42:00.001-07:00

In case you're interested, I've been writing album reviews for Noiseography.

Here's a few of them.

Long Divison's Calm Before

High Hopes' At The End Of The Day EP

Big City Nights' Might Minutes LP

BDK Interview - Jon Kleiman

2010-09-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

I started doing interviews on here for a couple of reasons. For one, I needed more content, and reviewing the drumming on albums was starting to get a little tedious every week. More importantly however, I was really interested in getting drummers' interpretations of their own playing. Rarely are drummers asked to analyze their own material and sort of value it's artistic credit. I like it when drummers have never really looked back onto their playing, and I love it when their answers are not at all what I expected, which is why it was so much fun to interview Jon Kleiman about Monster Magnet's Dopes To Infinity.

When I first contacted Jon I felt as if he was genuinely surprised someone was interested, I don't think he ever thought he would be talking to someone about something he recorded back in 1994. It also came as a shock to me that as far as albums he's played on, he's not really that into Dopes To Infinity. I think that's awesome, because instead of just buttering me up, I got some honest answers.

Here's the interview.

1. How did you begin to play drums when you were younger?

A friend of mine (in 7th grade I believe) had a Beatles cover band and needed a drummer, so I volunteered. It turned out the "band" was just the two of us. We played one show, then he quit to play with more accomplished instrumentalists, but I kept on going even though I showed little promise.

2. What was the music scene in New Jersey like when you started playing in bands around the area?

When I began playing seriously it was the mid 80's and the "scene" here was predominantly punk rock and hardcore bands. There was also the 60's psych revival thing going on, although that was beginning to wane. The bands I played in were : The Underachievers (forgettable hardcore), The Shock Mommies (good "funny" punk band) and The Watchchildren (amazing psych band, look for them. The stuff is hard to find but well worth searching out).

3. What drummers influenced your playing early on?

I'd have to say Ringo Starr early onn although I probably wasn't aware of it. Later influences certainly included Mitch Mitchell, Bill Ward and Keith Moon. Of course, I wasn't nearly as good as those drummers, so it didn't really matter...

4. Going into the studio for Dopes To Infinity, did you have any specific goals in mind? Were they accomplished?

By the time Dopes To Infinity came out, I think we were expected to produce a more refined or "professional" finished product. I'm not positive, but that's the way the production seemed geared towards. In that respect, and if that was the goal, I suppose it was achieved. We almost had a "hit" off the record, but not quite. In fact, I've always had a sneaking suspicion that it was my odd drum pattern that prevented "Negasonic" from becoming more popular. (****EDITORS NOTE**** If anything contributed to that song not being a hit, it was the fucking phaser on the guitar.)

5. I mentioned in my review that while the songs still have the power of early MM records, your playing is slower and more in the pocket. Was that a conscious thing?

My guess is that the songs on that record may have dictated a different approach to the drum patterns. There was less room for sloppy, badly played fills. I don't think it was a conscious decision on my part.

6. You mentioned in your reply to me that you weren't really sober most of the time. Jokes aside, how much of a part did drugs/alcohol have in the recording process?

Drugs were never involved in the studio except for maybe a little pot or beer here and there. Studio time was far too expensive and I'm sure I would have been fired instantly had I ruined a take because I was "Incapacitated". On tour was a different story.

7. Are there any memories you have of the actual recording process that sort of stick in your head?

It was done at The Magic Shop in NYC. They had some great recording equipment there. For that album I do remember not being allowed to play an early 60's Ludwig kit I had purchased because the producer thought it was too small and said something to the effect of "This isn't a fucking jazz band" (that actually may have been the previous record, same producer). So I guess I used my Vistalite kit (which I later sold to pay rent). The engineer had a fantastic ear, and for one song in particular kept telling me I was hitting the kick drum a 64th note too late. Yikes... I got to play bass on one song which was fun for me, but it probably sucked for Joe. And a song I co-wrote made it onto the album, which was nice. That's the last time that ever happened. But really what I remember most is stating at the Gramercy Park Hotel, drinking a lot, and throwing a lawn sized garbage bag filled with water out the 6th or 7th floor window. When it hit the ground it sounded like a bomb had exploded and car alarms everywhere started going off.

8. How did you feel about the album directly after it was finished?

I still missed the writing contributions of John McBain, but I guess we thought the album had some "sales potential". We were wrong!

9. How do you feel about it now?

I don't really listen to anything by MM these days. After McBain left, the music changed direction a bit. I guess I preferred the more garage oriented, "druggier" stuff. The records that hold up for me are the earlier ones, up to and including Tab.

10. If you could take one recording you've done throughout your career (MM or otherwise), something you feel is the best example of your talent and ability, and preserve it for the rest of time, and that one song alone had to represent everything about yourself as a drummer, an artist, a person, etc.. what song would you choose and why?

Yikes, I honestly have no idea. I like my writing in The Ribeyes' "Horn of Plenty" and I suppose my drums on MM's cover of "Evil" was a semi serviceable rip-off of Carmine Appice, even though the rack and floor tom sound on that song is awful.

BDK Interview - Jerry Granelli

2010-09-07T06:31:00.000-07:00

I learned more about playing the drums by sitting down to interview Jerry Granelli for forty minutes than any lesson or class I've ever taken. The man lives and breathes drums, and while some drummers I interview are sort of lost for words when talking about their intentions or methods, Jerry is very conscious of everything he does on his drum kit and he's able to discuss it with ease. It's no wonder he is a successful teacher, teaching a plethora of maritime jazz drummers from his drum studio on 1313 Hollis St here in Halifax. His new solo drum album which I reviewed last week gave me a good excuse to seek him out for an interview, and I think it went fairly well. He is a sight to be seen on the kit and he was the perfect person for me to have my first ever in person interview.

Let's hope I don't butcher everything during the transcribing process.

Why don't we start with you telling me how the whole 1313 project came about?

I guess like most drummers I've always had this kind of hallucination, and I've done a lot of solo concerts in the 70's and 80's around Seattle where I would just go to schools and take all the shit from their percussion department and make an instrument and then play it, and they actually payed me. And you know, I always solo in concert. Then, well, I guess Darcy (of Divorce Records) brought the idea to me.

How did you get involved with Darcy in the first place?

My Acupuncturist is Kermit Stick, and Darcy was working there during the day. We'd talk about music and he'd say things like, "have you checked out THIS". I was amazed by his inquisitiveness, and the music he liked all had kind of an edge to it.

Divorce Records has a pretty good reputation of being on the edge.

Yeah, I checked it out and it was great stuff. Then it's just one of those things where he was like "Hey man, you should do a solo record" and at first I was hesitant but he just kept pursuing it and we eventually put it together. I said "Here is the time I can do it" so we arranged it at my studio at 1313 Hollis, and Darcy and Charles (Charles Austin, recording engineer) came and everybody sort of got into it. I dragged out my electronics which I haven't been using for a while, stuff I've been using since the 60's.

Basically they came in and said "how do you want to do it?" and I said I wanted to make pieces. I sat there for four or five hours and made pieces and the ones that didn't work I threw away and if there was something I liked I kept it. I wanted pieces that had some compositional integrity to me.

Did you go into it with any ideas you had worked out beforehand?

Some of them were germs of things, some stuff with bells that I had worked on. The last track, A Nice Bunch Of Guys was something I've always wanted to do with overdubbing. If you listen close, it's pretty much the same pattern but I muffle different parts of the drums. I put these practice pad things on them so you couldn't hear them when they were being hit, so different parts of the pattern drop out each time. The interesting part of drumming is that if you play the same sticking and just move one hand you've got a whole other rhythmic highlight. So that's what that is.

I would also come into it at a different spot and try not to use a click track so that it's real organic feeling. I think I've also always loved pygmy music when they get a whole bunch of guys going it get's kind of whacked, y'know? And then Gamelon music, which is very precise. So it's somewhere in between those. When I listen back to it I realize it's a lot of implied pulse.

There's the mallet piece as well (Track 2, Mallets - Notes) where you have the pitches of the drums, and there is kind of a pulse, and it's not pounding at you but it's there. Charlie Mingus used to say he'd rather listen to a faucet drip than a metronome, so there's an organic quality to it.

Going back to what you said about electronics. I find a lot of the classic Jazz guys dismiss electronics, where you sort of embrace the technology. How did you get involved with electronics initially?

In the 1960's I started playing free music with these guys from San Fransisco, and the bass player invented this thing he called the Megatar. It was an 8-string instrument and man, it sounded like a thousand guitars. At the same time the rock thing was happening, and I was using bigger and bigger drum sets, four tympanis, twenty toms, you know, as big as I could make it. Pretty soon it was getting harder and harder to move that shit. Eventually I started hearing bigger sounds in my head than you could produce with and acoustic instrument, y'know? Like, you can't get thunder or a low enough pitch on a drum, and a drum does not sustain. The only way to make it sustain is to hit it constantly.

I started using speakers to drive the heads so that I could make them sustain, and just experimenting with the idea that the drums are a palate. I'm a sound composer, why would I exclude rather than include? And y'know, hanging around the Fillmore with Jimi Hendrix and those people, and really seeing what guitar players were doing, and being able to run my drums through big sound systems.

It's funny how when guitar pedals came along people were quick to embrace it, but it took much longer with electronic drums.

I think part of it is was they didn't build, well, they still haven't built good pickups. I mean I put it away because it was harder and harder to do it the wait I wanted to. I wanted pickups that would be able to run all kinds of guitar pedals. What also interests me is how to make it kind of crude and unpredictable enough that you have to deal with it in the moment. I have this old Emax and it's got a gorgeous bunch of samples in it, and I have myself sampled in it. I use the crude version, Octopads, which I can tune and sort of bang into how I want.

This is a real sort of Halifax gem of a record. You've got Yo Rodeo for the artwork, Divorce for a label, Charles for an engineer. Did that just sort of happen?

Yeah! It's really cool. I really trusted Darcy with this. For me, there was a lot of not knowing for this record. Darcy would come in and say "oh man, this is a great sound" and I would sort of say "Really? You think?" and he would say "yeah man, really" and I would just say "ok man, I trust you". It was really me trusting Darcy and Charles. I mean, I'm gonna be 70 years old, and one could easily become a caricature of himself, but I find that trusting people from another generation is good. Darcy and Charles sort of told me "Don't change what YOU do, just let us sort of fuck with it". So I did, and it worked. It was really inspiring. I find that sometimes, I just don't know.

But are you OK with that?

No, haha, it freaks me out. I'm not gonna lie y'know, sometimes Darcy would say "what do you think?" and I'd say "I don't know man, fuck it, I don't even know about this thing" and he would tell me to just keep going, and I would just get myself totally involved again.

Were you ever scared of misrepresenting yourself as a musician?

No. Really, at this point students will ask me like, hey man, what's you goal? And I'll say at this point, just to stay musically relevant. If I didn't listen to this and hear the compositional aspect of it I would be disappointed. I wanted to make a collection of pieces, but I had no desire to show off. I have nothing to show off anymore.

At what point in your career did you realize that skillfully, as a player, there was nothing left to learn? You know, Your limbs were fully independent, you had all the techniques down, you had done everything you could with your body, it was time to start seeing what you could do with your brain that wasn't being done.

Around 22.

Wow, that's early.

Yeah, well, it was dawning on me, but then I was fortunate to study with Joe Morello (Who I wrote about here). Technically, there was he and I. His solos are all total masterpieces. you can hear that influence, I hope, somewhere in my playing. He was the genius, but it kept dawning on me that I was somewhat hiding behind his technique and then I took a time of just simplifying my playing down to a real bare minimum, letting go of the technique in some way. Then, when I began to play free music I found that this technique was really invaluable, because then I could actually use it. I was like "man, it's really cool that I can keep one thing going with one hand and add another sound over here on the tympani." Then when I went to Vince Guaraldi he didn't want to hear any of it.

Could you see yourself doing something like this again?

Yeah, poor Darcy, I really like this enough now that I would like to do it again. I was thinking the other day that maybe next time that maybe I would go over to Dal or somewhere and just grab a bunch of tympanis or xylophones, just expand, but I don't want to lose it either.

Jerry Granelli - 1313

2010-08-29T07:23:00.000-07:00

A while back I posted about legendary jazz drummer Jerry Granelli recording a solo drum record for Divorce Records right here in Halifax. It's finally been released and given the material on it and it's limited run of 500 copies, this will be a hot item for drummers, collectors and music enthusiasts alike. Granelli's skill as a drummer is matched only by his imagination as an artist, and unlike other solo drum records (Hal Blaine's for instance) you never get the feeling that he is showing off.

In Mallets - Notes, Granelli travels around his kit in free time, but there is always the hint of a theme in his playing. His toms swell and change pitch as he adjusts pressure on the head, bringing out some semblance of a melody and juggling time along with it.

Other tracks have obvious themes that Granelli represents perfectly with his drums. The track Metal - Hail - Non-Stop is exactly what you think it would be, the sonic representation of a hail storm hitting a full drum kit. Granelli peppers his drums with fast 32nd and 64th notes altering speed and volume as the storm swells and recedes. The interesting part of Granelli's playing is not only the complete independence of his limbs, but the ability to lock certain parts of his playing in time and detach the rest of himself. On Walking On A Road With Some Bells Around Your Neck, his feet play a steady latin rhythm on the kick an high hat and his hands travel around his set of bells and chimes freely.

This record is the perfect representation of old-school chops combined with years exploring the artistic and fringe elements of percussion, along with all the style and technological advancements that have happened throughout his career. Granelli incorporates electronic drum pads into his playing on Wait For The Machine, plays variations of a classic jazz shuffle on What Can I Say - Drums, and plays various electronic tones and swells on Love Song For U.

The different approaches to the drum kit keep things from getting repetitive and when everything culminates into the last track, A Nice Bunch Of Guys, Granelli pulls out all of his tricks playing multi layered patterns all over the place. It sounds like he has six arms. This is not so much an album as it is a demonstration of the endless sounds you are able to create with a well tuned drum kit and a little imagination. Granelli's talent as a player shines through without seeming pretentious, and as his ideas and themes come to life you get a sense that Granelli has the ability to not only strip music down to its core parts, but the talent to manipulate and re-shape them into something absolute and indestructible.

You can order 1313 while supplies last from the Divorce Records website. You should buy it, it might just end up being the most interesting thing you own.

Here is the beginning of an interesting documentary on Jerry, the rest of it is available on youtube.

Monster Magnet - Dopes To Infinity

2010-08-20T20:41:00.000-07:00

Along with Clutch and Kyuss, Monster Magnet were one of the best early 90's stoner rock bands around. While Spine Of God is one of the best early examples of the genre, Dopes to Infinity is where they had a lot more money to spend, and they spent it in the right places.

For one thing, Jon Kleimans drums sound incredible. Everything is nice and thick sounding, punchy and forceful without being too thuddy. The quality of the drum recordings really help bring out the subtleties of Jon's talent. He has a interesting way of playing mid-tempo patterns but making them feel urgent. The first track, Dopes To Infinity, is loud and powerful, but when you listen to the drums Jon is actually playing fairly slow. He's just sitting behind the beat, locked in and keeping things pushing forward. He never jumps ahead of the guitars or tries to take over the song. So many times he could have ruined everything by being too busy, but instead he lets the great guitar work take the lead.

He picks the speed up a little with Negasonic Teenage Warhead, but his patterns are still fairly minimal compared to other drummers from the genre at that time. Kleiman is like Dale Crover meets ?uestlove. He can trudge through the slop with the rest of 'em, like the sludged out Third Alternative, but he has such a deep rooted technique of playing the pocket that it makes everything feel so comfortable.

He gets to show off a little more in Theme From "Masterburner". Quick riff changes and timed hits keep him busy, but he manages to slip in some pretty epic rolls in throughout the song. Definitely a highlight.

This album was a minor success that helped Monster Magnet maybe dip it's toes into the industry pool before deciding to jump in. They had been making great records for years, it's nice that they were eventually able to sell some of them. If this album had come out five years before or five years after it did, it would have been huge, but alas, it sort of gets overlooked by those top ten lists people like to read so much. Luckily for stoner rock bands, there will always be stoners looking for those perfect albums to listen to. They'll eventually find this one.

Eventually.

BDK Interview - Ian Vanek

2010-08-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

Meet Ian Vanek.

Ian is one half of Japanther.

Japanther like to put out records like crazy.

This is one.

And these are some other ones.

Most of all they like to tour as much as possible and play for people.

People like this.

And This.

Anyway, you get the point.

To play drums in a band with only one other instrument you have to be on the ball if you want anyone to pay attention.

If you want to play drums in a 2-piece band whose objective it is to give a room full of people one the most energetic experiences they've ever had, you'd better be fucking tight or everything will surely go to hell. And well, if you'll allow me to briefly sexualize our instrument, Ian Vanek plays drums the way you would hate-fuck your ex girlfriend after you find out she blew some guy while you were in Quebec (but before you tell her you know).

Ian let me interview him, and while I was hoping for a little more insight into the mind of a madman, what I got back was, well, I don't know what I got, but it's something.

1. How long have you been playing drums?

I've been drumming since roughly 1984'-85'

2. How long have you been touring?

On the road regularly since 1997 on.

3. Tell me about your newest record.

Our new record "Rock and Roll Ice Cream" is on Menlo Park recordings and came out Feb 26th 2010.

4. What are some of your favorite albums?

My favorite albums are "Dump The Body In Rikki Lake", "Tut Tut Now Shake Yer Butt" and "Skuffed Up My Huffy". The new album is pretty amazing too. Michael Blum who produced "Like a Prayer" produced it and made it sound great. It's that wall of sound, sixties shit that we have always been after.

5. When did you first get the inkling to play drums and what was the musical climate like when you started?

I was born into a race of drummers in Washington State in 1980. My father had a snare drum in the rafters from the time I was born. He also gave me a nameless, sparkly blue trap kit from a thrift store for my fifth birthday. When I was an adolescent I watched great bands in Seattle bars with a fake ID.

6. How did you end up in NYC from Washington?

Oh shit, real talk. Hadda bail on the jakes before I caught a F. Moved to DC first for a summer then went to art school in Brooklyn. Oly and NYC are night and day. I still rep Oly hard though. We have friends, family, and fans out there. I live in New York for the time being... Capitol of the untidy states of amerikkka. Brooklyn Borough.

7. You guys hit the road like madmen early on. Were audiences fairly responsive initially?

We had a Germs-esque feel then. Very wild, short, fun shows that mostly art school girls would attend. Our first show was opening for Lightning Bolt and Pink & Brown. From then on things just got more exciting.

8. People always talk about the incredible things that happen on tour, but I've been on tour and I've always been interested in how shitty things can get. What's one of the more terrible moments you've had on the road?

Chipley, Florida. Engine catches on fire whilst fueling. We all handled it like champs though. I ran in the gas station and got the extinguisher then Mikey & Alex stayed behind to get it fixed and The Pharmacy drove us to Pensacola, Florida. The show must go on.

9. By hiring Michael Blum are you fulfilling some sort of secret Japanther goal of mirroring Madonna's career? If so, when can we expect your Justify My Love phase?

No, I'm not really sure, that's the exciting part. Matt and I have been lucky enough to play together for going on 9 years. Maybe "Rock and Roll Ice Cream" is "Justify My Love" and we ARE in the phase now. DEEEP>

10. I've always found your playing pretty unique in the way that it takes the powerful and spastic qualities of early DC hardcore bands but it's sort of held together by a deep rooted technique (if that makes any sense). Did you ever have any formal training?

My father showed me some things but I never really had formal training. "Parra-Diddle Parra-Diddle". I guess I've read about it a lil' over the years, but mainly just "rest transparent".

11. What kind of drum gear do you use currently and how loyal are you to it?

Sticks that are natural and uncoated do me well. I like riveted cymbals but we play it all. Not going to name drop products because we play what sounds good. Keep experimenting your whole life.

12. Finally, if you could punch one drummer in the face, who would it be?

I need these hands to drum. Would rather take it to the skins...

Note: All of the photos I used are from Google images. I know that with some searching and internet detectivery I could come up with a photo credit for each one and probably a website too, but most of them had nothing on them from the source page and I don't have time to start rifling through old web content trying to find everything. If you took one of the photos I used and want credit just leave a comment. If you want it taken down, then leave a comment as well, no hard feelings. If you don't care, awesome. thanks.

Yes - Relayer

2010-08-06T06:36:00.000-07:00

Relayer for me has always been the pinnacle of excessive, pretentious 70's prog rock. Long-winded songs, complicated arrangements and epic solos were the food of the gods at the time and Yes always served up the perfect three-course meal. When it was released, Relayer was a hot discussion item for many stuffy long haired musical elitists. Now, instead of blowing minds, it probably gets most of its plays from fat guys in sweat pants playing WOW in their mom's basement and eating cheese from a tube. The modern musical ideas of what's "cool" might have shifted over the years, but that doesn't make Alan White any less of a great drummer. The fact that he can follow what's going on during most Yes songs is proof enough.

I could of put any of Yes' early prog albums here and basically achieved the same objective. They all had 20+ minute songs (hell, Tales from Topographic Oceans has FOUR of them) and they all had a ridiculous amount of parts and loads of awesome drumming. However, Relayer has Sound Chaser, which is not only my favorite Yes song, it's quite possibly the best thing Alan White has ever done.

Sound Chaser is one of the best examples of Jazz Fusion in existence, its got rock patterns blazing by at be-bop speed and its the only song I'm going to talk about because the other two are pretty much everything you would expect from Yes.

From the start Alan White follows the keyboards with quick tom rolls and accents the hits with fast cymbal smashes. By the time the main part comes in everyone seems to be going crazy. Chris Squire can play the bass faster than anyone, and White is right there with him catching every note. I don't think his hands stop playing sixteenth notes for the first two minutes. This song is like a guitar solo sandwich, everyone backs off in the middle to let Steve Howe do his thing and then comes back to slap some rock bread on that shit. They close it off with a more solid rock base, but it starts to gain momentum again and soon enough they're off again and things just get weirder.

If you were to record Sound Chaser in your basement and send it off to record labels as a demo you would get it back three weeks later with a letter saying "I have no idea what this is, it's kinda good, but it's fucking weird". You might have some luck with Mike Patton's label but that's it. The fact that someone gave Yes thousands of dollars to make this makes me happy. The fact that it sold well commercially and went to #5 on the Billboard charts makes me even happier, because that would NEVER happen today.

Those were different times, but I can't figure out if they were better or not.

BDK Playlist July 2010

2010-07-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

photo : Chelle Wooten

I've compiled 25 songs for a playlist I think gives a broad example of great drumming from various bands I've posted about and some I havn't gotten around to yet. I hope that you load it onto your Ipod and listen to it loudly through good headphones, the way music should be heard.

You can download it HERE.

Here is the tracklist.

1. Battles - Race: In

2. Broken Social Scene - KC Accidental

3. Can - Vitamin C

4. The Flaming Lips - Waitin' For A Superman

5. Deep Purple - Highway Star

6. Deerhoof - The Perfect Me

7. At The Drive-in - Arcarsenal

8. The Clash - Clampdown

9. Bloc Party - Luno

10. The National - Brainy

11. The Constantines - Young Lions

12. MGMT - Brian Eno

13. Contrived - I Don't Ever Want To Get Married

14. Fugazi - Epic Problem

15. Do Make Say Think - The Universe!

16. Refused - The Deadly Rhythm

17. Maserati - Show Me The Season

18. Spoon - Jonathon Fisk

19. DEVO - Uncontrollable Urge

20. Shad - Keep Shining

21. Elvis Costello - No Action

22. The Inflation Kills - Bad Wolf

23. Trans Am - I Want It All

24. Modest Mouse - Bury Me With It

25. Think About Life - Sofa-bed

BDK Interview - Paul Banwatt

2010-07-17T09:46:00.000-07:00

photo : Marc Hodge

I posted about Paul Banwatt (of The Rural Alberta Advantage and Woodhands) back in June. Figuring that he might not be that hard to get a hold of (he wasn't), I sought him out for an interview. Here it is.

1. What drummers (local or otherwise) influenced your particular style growing up?

Steve Shelly, John Bonham and Mitch Mitchell. And I still respectfully rip them off every day.

2. What was the musical climate like when you started playing in bands?

I started playing in the Mississauga and Brampton high school band scene. I love how DIY it is for kids who want to put on shows but are not welcome in most bars. You find every space that will have you - rec centers, churches, friends' basements. I'm sure it is still the same way today. The only sad part is that it creates a separation between the kids and the adults.

3. How does your approach differ between your two projects (RAA and Woodhands)?

They are very different bands, but they are each fronted by an extremely talented songwriter. There is something universal about great songwriting, regardless of genre. I think I try my best to pull each band towards the same middle-ground, which is less boring than it sounds.

The RAA BFF4EVA

photo : Patrick Leduc

4. Is there any particular gear or equipment you have an attachment to?

I have grown very fond of my pearly Rhythm Traveller. I am using it in a way that it was not intended, but it is holding up like a champ. And with new heads and hardware, it is a sturdy little kit.

5. What kind of process do you use when working out rhythms?

I start by listening to vocal melodies and blocking out everything else. Ideally, I like it when my drums compliment and accent the vocals. Then, I listen to everything else that is happening to out the rest of the rhythm. Neither band I play in has a bass player, and I feel like that gives me a little bit more freedom rhythmically.

6. Your approach on some of the RAA songs is fairly involved for that particular genre, are you ever asked to tone it down?

All the time. But honestly, even more often I am asked to be more crazy. No one will believe me, but it is often me telling Nils that I don't want to ruin his beautiful songs by playing something too insane. It is one reason why I love playing in that band though. We will let each other try anything, no matter how strange, before rejecting it. And we all can have input on every aspect of a song.

7. What are some albums you feel are underrated in terms of drumming or percussion?

I'm not sure if it is underrated, but the drumming on Dirty Projectors' Bitte Orca is incredible.

Next on the docket perhaps?

8. Do you have any particular rituals on tour to keep your energy up and stay motivated?

No rituals. I just need 8 hours of sleep. I also try to limit the amount of time I spend in venues. If I spend the whole day in the venue before playing, I feel less excited.

9. Is there any particular recordings you've done that you are most proud of?

I have always liked Drain The Blood, just because I didn't quite know how to play the beat I could hear in my head for that song, so I worked on it and learned it. I am better at it now than I was then, so it is fun for me to listen to that and feel like I am still improving.

"hey wait, what if we tried the rhythm method?"

Paul will be coming to the Maritimes when Woodhands plays the Evolve festival at the end of the month. Make sure you take a break from the hula hooping and fire dancing and go see them, it'll be worth it.

The Besnard Lakes - The Besnard Lakes Are The Roaring Night

2010-07-13T05:40:00.000-07:00

There is something about this album that is inherently Canadian. It's slower paced than most indie rock records, and it's a little noisier, but it is extremely well orchestrated from start to finish. It's the perfect record to listen to if you're driving through the rockies in Alberta, or the farms of Manitoba, or the rolling hills of Quebec, or even the shoreline of the East Coast. It's feels like it came out of nowhere, from everywhere. This has been a good year so for Canadian music, and it's because of quality albums like this that our bands are getting international recognition. The Besnard Lakes are in the running for the coveted $20 000 Polaris Prize, and by golly, I think they might just win it, and so do other people. (read Halifax is Burning's Polaris predictions here).

Now, I talk about myself probably a little too much on here, but I don't care. Why should you listen to me if you don't have any grasp of my own experiences as a drummer right? Right.

Ok. There are two things that I used to do all of the time that I don't do so much anymore. They are:

1. Practice drums.

and

2. Play drums along to records.

However last week I found myself in an empty room with a drum kit, a PA, and an hour to kill before the rest of the guys showed up. I hooked up my iPod to the PA, put this album on, and learned how to play the whole thing. It didn't hurt that I had been listening to it non stop for the last three weeks.

It gave me a whole new respect for this album. Kevin Laing's smoothness as a drummer is really what gives this record it's relaxed but strong feel. I could lock into his playing really easily but I could never hit the transitions as well as him, the timing is flawless. He has incredible time, and he really knows how to draw out parts by adding small variables as songs progress.

He can keep songs marching forward, like And This Is What We Call Progress where he plays the same pattern through the whole song with small washes of cymbals and tom builds thrown in once in a while to accent the vocal. He can also stretch and maneuver around time fairly fluently. In Like The Ocean, Like The Innocent his snare rolls leading into the chorus give a brief taste of off time, only to come in perfectly on the first hit of the chorus.

His patience as a player also really stands out. He waits almost five whole minutes before coming in on Light Up The Night, bursting through the dense noise at the end of the song to carry the weight of it the rest of the way. The way his kick drum locks into the bass keeps everything grounded while vocal parts soar over top, definitely something that would be incredible to see live, which I'm hoping to do when The Besnard Lakes come to town with Wintersleep in the fall.

You should probably come too. it's going to be loud.

Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record

2010-07-06T06:06:00.000-07:00

The lo-fi recording techniques Broken Social Scene had been using for their albums used to really piss me off. Sure, it worked when BSS was more of an idea than a band, sort of a recording project between friends, but once everything took off it made no sense to keep making albums in the same fashion.

For those of you who don't know who Broken Social Scene are (I know you're out there, it's ok) I'll give a short, slightly confusing rundown to get you up to speed.

- There is a band called Broken Social Scene.

- Originally started as a recording project between Kevin Drew and Brenden Canning, it sort of developed into a giant band full of some of the best talent Canada has to offer in this modern musical climate (Feist, Emily Haines of Metric, most of Stars, some of Do Make Say Think, and Bill Priddle, the guy who apparently made Treble Charger awesome because they sure went to shit after he left).

- In 2002 due to the critical and slight commercial success of their second album You Forgot it in People, they were actually able to make some money, and they found themselves in a better position than 95% of Canadian indie bands.

- The success of BSS alumni bands like Metric and Stars kept people interested for the next few years, and the international success of member Leslie Feist's second solo album in 2004 brought them even more attention. The influx of cash into their shared label Arts & Crafts didn't hurt either.

- Anticipation for the follow up record was high among critics and consumers alike. Unfortunately for lack of a better term, it kind of sucked. I mean, it's still better than probably anything I've done, but for the potential that was there it was lackluster. Then Broken Social Scene broke up. Sort of.

- Now they're back. Sort of.

I'm telling you all of this because every mistake that was made on the follow-up record has been corrected and improved upon with their new album, Forgiveness Rock Record. This is the album they should have put out in 2005, but better late than never.

They kept the best parts of their recording techniques and really improved on my biggest gripe with their previous albums, the drums. Justin Peroff has always been an incredible drummer, but his ability would sometimes get buried in the lo-fi marshes of the Broken Social Scene "sound". Finally he gets the huge drum sound he deserves, and it makes for a much more full bodied album (This probably has to do a lot with hiring drummer John McEntire of Tortoise to produce).

Justin is in great form on this whole album. When he alternates between a snare rim/tom pattern and a huge half time rock beat on the opening track, World Sick it sets the pace for the rest of the record, which has some fairly epic songs. He keeps things straight on Meet Me In The Basement, and he uses well timed shots to really send the song off. He can rock it when he has to, like on Forced To Love, or he can keep it buried, like the mixture of drums and electronics in Texico Bitches. I Think my favorite part of the whole album is when the drums come in amid the up tempo eletro beat in Chase Scene, but really this whole record makes me excited. It's nice to see BSS found the right balance of proper and experimental recording, and it's even nicer to hear the intricate playing of Justin Peroff without having to put my stereo on 9.

BDK Update

2010-06-13T18:58:00.001-07:00

Noiseography crew

I did another guest review for Noiseography, this time I reviewed the Caribou and Rich Aucoin sets from The Paragon on friday night. You can read them here.

BDK News

2010-06-10T06:55:00.000-07:00

I usually don't post news items on here, but I am so impressed by this I had to post it. Legendary Jazz drummer Jerry Granelli (Vince Guaraldi Trio, Light Sound Dimension, etc) has not only recorded his first ever solo drum record, he recorded it in Halifax with our own engineer mastermind Charles Austin and it's being released in a limited run by Halifax label Divorce Records (with artwork by Yo Rodeo, completing the trifecta of local involvement).

Granelli began his career as a pupil of Joe Morello, whom I previously wrote about here. He went on to have a long successful career as a free jazz, improvisational and psychedelic musician. He has played with some of the greats, such as Bruce Frisell and Ornette Coleman, and he was also the drummer on the soundtrack to a Charlie Brown Christmas.

This is a huge accomplishment for our local boys and a step forward for Granelli, who always seems to be pushing his limits. The album is available for pre order on the Divorce Records website, and here is the official press release.

"Jerry Granelli has lived a mythic life. He drummed in some of the biggest jazz outfits of the 50s-60s, including Vince Guaraldi Trio and the Denny Zetlin Trio. Like many of his peers, Granelli could have played it safe and made a comfortable career doing traditional jazz into his old age, but instead he dove into the new worlds of free and psychedelic music that were opening up around him during the hippie era in San Francisco. In the early 60’s he led one of the first free jazz bands in America. They did a three month opening spot for Lenny Bruce and toured extensively through Europe with the Grateful Dead, playing completely wild and spontaneous sets night after night, often to the scorn of unsuspecting audiences. A few years later he joined Light Sound Dimension (LSD), an outfit that paired marathons of free, amplified jazz with projection painting, effectively launching the first ever psychedelic light and sound event at the San Francisco Art Museum in 1967. LSD was recently inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Since those early years Jerry has played with an impressive list of innovators including Bruce Frisell, Ornette Coleman, Jamie Saft, and Anthony Braxton to name just a few. And at 70 he still travels the world playing and teaching new music.

Despite all his accomplishments, until we asked, Granelli had yet to make a solo drum record. For us it seemed fitting that after a life behind the kit, Jerry finally go it alone. No one, including Jerry, knew what to expect, but the results are remarkable. All the tracks on 1313 except one were played with no overdubs, and most were done in a single take. For those of us involved with documenting the session, it was a magical night. 1313 is dark, masterful, and bravely unique --- an outstanding new exploration of percussion and sound by a man who has been challenging himself musically for 60+ years. Here at DIVORCE we have never been more excited about a release. Engineered by Charles Austin. Produced by Charles Austin, Jerry Granelli, and Darcy Spidle. Mastered by Weasal Walter. Art by Yo Rodeo. Edition of 600 copies. Mail order version includes a CD. SHIPS IN EARLY JULY."

Indie Spotlight: The Rural Alberta Advantage - Hometowns

2010-06-08T11:43:00.000-07:00

The schizophrenic drumming of Paul Banwatt (also of Woodhands) is like a puzzle piece that is slightly misshapen so you shove it down with your thumb to make it fit. It should feel out of place in the mid tempo party-folk songs of The Rural Alberta Advantage, but it doesn't. Instead it shifts the feel of the songs into something erratic and epic, a foundation that is always moving.

This is no more evident than in Don't Haunt This Place where the drums take center stage, swirling around the vocal and getting in quick cymbal shots and jabs. His time is perfect as he plays quick rolls and off kilter patterns seldom heard on folk records. In Drain The Blood, Banwatt's hands are all over the place but his kick drum foot is locked in tight with the bass. When the chorus comes in he unleashes a succession of tom and snare rolls. His drumming takes on a more aggressive feel in Luciana, the cymbal swells and rolls have a high tempo psychedelic feel to them, and he keeps his kick drum pumping through the track.

The drumming on this record wouldn't be so notable if the songs weren't so damn awesome. once in a while Paul will take a lesser stance and let the songs really come through. In The Air he stays on track with a cool kick snare pattern while the keyboard and vocals take charge. All in all, Paul's patterns are a step out of the ordinary for this kind of record, the songs benefit from having someone play outside of the original frame of the piece. It doesn't necessarily work for everyone, but for the RAA it's a recipe for success.

Black Mountain - In The Future

2010-06-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

I think if I had millions of dollars and the ability to make movies, I would have Black Mountain on my payroll to score everything I do. It's really hard to blend darker elements of rock, prog and psych, keep it at a mid tempo and still manage to play powerful epic songs. When it fails you get just another shitty rock band. When it works, you get an album like In The Future, perfect in its idea and execution. Critics subsequently lose their minds over it.

If you've never heard this album then I can't really describe it for you, it sounds like everything that has happened in music already, yet there has never been anything like it before. Personally, I like it because it sounds like an album The Melvins (whom I love) would make if they could just focus. Every part feels thought out to the last detail, everything from tone to themes to lyrics to melody to mic placement and production. The drums sound like they were recorded in the hull of a warship on its way to lay waste to the shoreline of its enemies. It also helps that Joshua Wells has the patience of a saint. He knows when to sail along quietly and when to launch the cannons.

Wells can keep time with the best of them, but where he really shines is with his toms. Evil Ways is driven by a twisted version of the Bo-Diddly tom beat, and towards the end we get few glimpses of Wells' skill on his instrument, enough to let us know that he knows what he's doing, but not so much as to come off as pretentious. Tyrants is the second longest and most epic track on the record, and most of the time Wells is stomping along with muddy, thunderous tom beats and rolls. It's never extravagant, always the right amount of flash and focus, and his drumming keeps things interesting for the entire 8 minute song.

Wells is patient with his approach. In Queens Will Pay he spends half of the song in silence, the tension building as you can sense him lurking in the shadows. Finally he attacks, and with a wash of cymbals he conquers the last minute of the track. The whole album is littered with examples of mature, focused musicianship and it deserves all the praise it acquired.

This is an album I will listen to until I'm old and deaf, I just know it.

BDK Update

2010-06-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

So I just got back from a two-week tour (hence the no posting) and I'm still getting settled so give me a few more days to get some stuff up. In the meantime, we filmed a bunch of stuff on the road and you can check it out while I sort myself out.

First off we filmed a spoof episode of MTV Cribs in Waterloo.

And here are a series of short blogs from our trip.

There that should keep you occupied for a while.

Malajube - Trompe l'oeil

2010-05-13T14:15:00.000-07:00

When I was in Notre Dame-du Lac, Quebec with a broken down van and a group of frustrated people, I purchased a number of Quebec exclusive "big beers" and along with my band mates proceeded to drink until I didn't care about our predicament anymore. What followed was a night of billiards, poutine, and at some point, my first actual exposure to the television channel Musique Plus (I may have watched it once, briefly, while on a high school trip to Quebec City, but I was probably too busy looking at french girls' bums to pay attention). At one point, when the seven of us were crammed in our hotel room, this video came on :

It was nice and unexpected to see a video that not only in itself was visually interesting, but the song was extremely well written, catchy and poppy with enough noise and odd parts to catch the ear of anyone who was looking for more. I guess I was just used to the onslaught of garbage transmitted by Musique Plus' english counterpart. We have long stopped being able to get anything decent broadcast into our living rooms during the regular hours of the night. We promptly bough their album while in Montreal and listened to it approximately thirteen times before we arrived back to Halifax.

What Malajube proved with the success of this album is that great songs will always transcend language barriers as long as everything else is done properly. To be honest, I never used to put much stock into French music (and I'm French), but this album instantly struck a chord with me, the intention of the songs comes across even if you don't understand what he is saying. Growing up I had heard a lot of french music, but it was all mostly about girls and fishing. I had never really been exposed to much coming out of Quebec and France other than Celine Dion and Daft Punk, and really, for a French record to have much chance of success internationally is fairly slim, both Celine and Daft Punk sing in english. Thankfully, people are starting to acually listen to music now, and bands like Sigur Ros and Laakso are doing fairly well all over the world.

The drums on this album can only be described as fat. They sound thick and precise with a very room-y and huge presence, like a Flaming Lips record. Francis Mineau does a great job of playing off melodies and vocal lines but keeping everything rooted with the bass. He plays with a real sense of urgency and power, it feels like he's hitting really hard even in the quiet parts. Songs like Pate Filo and Montreal -40 keep a nice steady rock beat with lots of huge cymbals and some rave ups, while songs like La Crabe and Fille a Plume have loud and deep tom rolls and lots of strict timekeeping.

If I had any money at all to bring a band to the East Coast, it would definitely be these guys. It would give me a chance to just sit on the side of the stage and watch Francis play*. I could also get them to bring me some big beers and some poutine on their way.

*I once had the chance to see Malajube in Hyacinthe, Quebec, while on my way home from a tour. I had even contacted them, told them I was on the road and really wanted to see them but I had no money and they put all of us on the guest list, along with their cell phone number in case anything went wrong, which was super cool. Alas the day came and we were so exhausted from the previous two weeks that we drove straight home to our beds. It was definitely the right thing to do, but I haven't had the chance to see them live since, and every time I think about it, I piss myself off.

BDK Interview - Brad Weber

2010-05-02T07:45:00.000-07:00

Brad Weber is fast becoming one of Canada's most inventive and talented drummers. Most often he is on the road playing with Dan Snaith's Polaris-prize winning project Caribou (whom I previously wrote about here). Any down time is put towards his current multi percussion juggernaut Pick a Piper (whom I also wrote about, here). PaP recently completed an eastern Canadian tour before Weber shipped off to the UK to begin rehearsals for the next Caribou outing. With Pick a Piper, Weber breaks songs down to their rhythmic core and builds them back up with layers upon layers of tribal beats, tambourines, shakers and multiple drum kits. With Caribou, he blazes a trail through the schizophrenic patterns and melodies planted by Snaith, something that requires a deeper understanding of rock drumming than most care to explore. He is a master of dynamics and an engaging performer, someone that really displays the capacities of the instrument while still having a good time.

I met Brad after I shared the stage with Pick a Piper for two shows in Halifax. I knew he was going to be a decent drummer, but I didn't expect him to be as theatrical as he was. He struck me as someone who can remain extremely focused amidst musical chaos, someone who never loses his place or his cool. I've always been interested in people who can still have fun whilst taking their art seriously. I asked Brad if he would be interested in doing an interview. He's a pretty nice guy, so he said yes.

photo: F. Yang

1. Your approach to percussion in Pick a Piper seems influenced by tribal/polyrhythmic drumming. When did you begin exploring the potential of multiple drummers?

I started exploring multi-drum rhythms a lot in solo recordings of mine, perhaps starting 6 or 7 years ago. It was just so interesting how rhythmic layers could play off each other in an intriguing way. I've always been into various hand percussion, shaky items, pots and pans, etc... anything I can toss into a track I will.

I didn't start to play with another drummer live until I joined Caribou in 2007. After a year of touring with such a setup I was fascinated to try out a similar incarnation of my own. I had started collaborating a lot with Angus and Dan Roberts (second drummer and bass player in Pick a Piper respectively) and everything we completed just begged for at least one more kit on stage. Then we added hand percussion and points in the set when the four of us would play drums together.

2. Walk me through your songwriting process, do drums come first?

So far that has mostly been the case. We'll start with a rhythmic idea and base the song around that. We've been setting out to make dance music by organic means. Incorporating lots of percussion and building songs around those rhythmic origins has been a good way so far.

3. How did you become involved with Caribou?

My old band Winter Equinox saw Caribou back in 2004 and gave them our demo CD at the time and kept up communication with Dan Snaith over email. Near the end of The Milk Of Human Kindness tour, we emailed Dan and asked if we could open a show in Hamilton. To our excitement, he said yes! A year and a bit after that show Dan was still living in London UK and sent me an email about possibly joining Caribou in the future. He said he had remembered my drumming from that show and asked if I could record an audition. Coincidentally enough I happened to be in London on holidays at the time and met up with him and Ryan for lunch. We seemed to hit it off well and I went back to Canada and bunkered up for a week learning short loops of some of the more challenging Caribou drum parts. In the end he was happy with the audition and asked me to join. Definitely a highlight of my life so far.

4. Has drumming for Caribou influenced your playing in Pick a Piper, or vice-versa?

Playing with Snaith and the guys has taught me a lot. I've really learned to be a lot more dynamic drummer and very aware of space in my playing -- knowing when to keep it simple and when to release the gorilla! Snaith has turned me on to tons of amazing records that have totally broadened m style and given Pick a Piper a much larger palette of influences to draw from. Other than a few frantic moments in the PaP set, I generally try to lock onto the rhythmic foundation of the song and play out that particular groove in an almost hypnotic fashion. I think it's really important as a drummer to know when to just hold down the fort, especially making dancier music with Pick a Piper.

5. You have a very huge presence on the drums (mouth open, arms up in the air), is this something that just happens naturally?

I think it's just a matter of really really enjoying playing music live. I can't help but physically ebb and flow along to what I am playing.

6. What are some of your favorite independent Canadian drummers who should get more attention?

Mark Gaudet -- Elevator/Eric's Trip

Liam Epps -- What's He Building in There/ Ace Kincaid

Mike Bond -- Bocce

I don't really think of drummers in terms of their nationalities, so I'm having a tough time figuring out who is Canadian or not! Those guys are all really good though and there are tons more that I'm definitely missing.

Elevator - maritime psych rock wunderkinds

7. Do you have any specific gear you can't go on the road without?

I'm not much of a gear head really. I feel like it's easy to spend more time obsessing over gear than actually making music. I really enjoy making the most of whatever equipment I have at the time. Right now I'm playing on a really small Gretsch jazz kit that I really like, but with Caribou I play with Dan's kit, which is totally different. I've been incorporating midi triggers and foot pedals connected through a laptop lately and really enjoy the freedom and spontaneity those allow us. I've always used Vic Firth 5A sticks. I guess that's the one thing I can't go without, I'm pretty picky about it. Although I've never used anything else for most of my drumming career, so maybe I should force a change at some point!

8. What are your intentions with drumming for the future?

I'd like to continue playing with Caribou as long as I can and then work on my own music whenever we have breaks. I'll be touring with Caribou for the rest of the year, so we're hoping to finish writing and recording a Pick a Piper full length sometime in 2011. I just always want to be playing with other people and so far it's working out pretty well!

photo: Carl w. Heindl

You can catch Brad on tour with Caribou for the next while. The Halifax show on June 11th will be supported by two great acts, Rich Aucoin, who is a one man dance party, and Tomcat Combat, whom I've previously written about here. It's the must see show of the summer.

Bad Brains - Bad Brains

2010-04-23T14:50:00.001-07:00

To say that Bad Brains were one of the fastest punk bands for their time would be stupid, they are probably the fastest punk band period. Punk music was never really about being a good musician, it was more about the power and the attitude, but Bad Brains took things a little further.

With a background rooted in Jazz and Reggae* they took all of the skills they had acquired to be able to play intricate, technical parts as fast as they fucking could. Every drummer worth a damn today has given some respect to Earl Hudson of Bad Brains, the machine behind it all. Dave Grohl, Questlove, Josh Freese, Chad Smith, Jimmy Chamberlain, hell I bet even Phil Collins listens to Bad Brains.

When you hear songs like Pay to Cum or Don't Need It for the first time, it can be hard to discern what the hell is going on, but if you listen to Earl's drumming, you'll notice that he is on top of everything. Every chord change, every melody, every scream has Earl behind it with a snare roll or a cymbal shot or a high hat smash or something. The end of Don't Need It is an insane tom/snare pattern, and it's probably the most raw, powerful drums I've ever heard.

I seem to remember a road trip from some time back where we only had two cassettes in the car and I'm pretty sure one was Springsteen and the other was Bad Brains live at CBGB's. I would say that for every time we heard Born to Run we heard the entire Bad Brains show three times.

Sorry Boss, but Weinberg ain't got shit on Earl Hudson.

* I am aware that part of this album is made up of Reggae music, but here's the thing. I don't like Reggae music. I also don't know how to write about it without sounding like a dick. I understand it's importance and it's impact, but I haven't been able to get over the fact that it spawned all this rich suburban white boy funk bullshit. I understand that Bad Brains had a whole lot of influence in that realm as well, but until someone apologizes for 311 I probably won't give it another chance.

Post #100 - BDK Anniversary

2010-04-18T08:35:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow will mark an entire year since my first post upon the creation of this blog. This is also my 100th post (including a few news/update posts) which makes it really easy for me to do the math and say I average a post roughly every 3.65 days or so. I'm happy with that. I never really had much intentions for this other than to practice writing in a forum that was comfortable and familiar, and sort of give a little justification and reasoning behind why I love certain records. You see, I have a tendency to lose interest in things. Lack of self discipline along with laziness and a short attention span don't really pave the way for a lasting relationship with writing an online blog. But I didn't think anyone would actually read it either. Sometimes I get to the point where I haven't really heard anything that I found interesting enough to write about, or I'm getting tired of trying to explain the same things in as many different ways as possible. I get frustrated. I get tired. And I'll leave it for a week or so and go onto other things. Then I'll get a little e-mail or Facebook message from someone (sometimes I know them, sometimes I don't), or someone will come up to me at a show and say "hey man, I like your reviews. good stuff."

That's all it takes. My neurons kick into gear and music sounds the way it's supposed to and I can hear the little things I like to hear again. Soon enough there is a few more posts walking out the front door and onto the front page, on their way towards the archive like a cowboy in a sunset.

My point is that it's you guys that decide how much time I put into this, and so far, you've all kept me above water. Good job. In one year I've managed to write pages and pages of reviews, some good, some bad. I interviewed someone I genuinely respect and listen to often. I guest-wrote for another local blog. I had a pretty good year. I did a few things that were out of my comfort zone, and it didn't go so bad.

Now, you might be wondering how much traffic I actually get. According to my counter I have 2645 hits. That counts actual hits to the main page and, I think, people who read it in an RSS feeds (I haven't really gotten the hang of it yet). Now, that's not a whole lot. but what I do know is that it took roughly 8 months to get 1000 hits, which means the next 1645 came in the last four months. That's progress.

The truth is, I have no legitimate way to gauge how many people actually read this. Facebook hits don't get counted, and I know I get some readership there but whenever I see a hit from anywhere overseas I just imagine it's one of those bots that combs through thousands of websites a day searching for e-mails to send spam to. So I need your help.

For this next year, I would like to get a greater understanding of my readership, however little it may be. Is it only drummers who find this interesting? Do you want more interviews or should I stick to albums? Should I pack it up and call it a day?

Any interest at all is motivating to me which will in turn breed content, so without trying to self promote too much, but also not really giving a shit, I have created a Bloody Drum Knuckles Facebook Page for those interested enough to join. This will be used more for having an easy way to interact with everyone, and not so much for sending out mass messages and status updates. I'll probably update it every time there is a new post, or anytime something newsworthy pertaining to the subject matter comes up. I'll try not be too bothersome.

Join up and tell me, what would you like to see over the next year?

Come, sit with me,

let's talk.

MGMT - Congratulations

2010-04-16T06:05:00.000-07:00

It seems every summer of my adult years has an album that sort of encapsulates the whole season. It makes its way into every party and onto every iPod playlist with infectious songs that cause everyone to go "Who is this? Why don't I know about this?". In 2007, that album for me was MGMT's Oracular Spectacular (and if you want to keep track St Elsewhere was Summer 2006, 2008 was Daft Punk's Alive 2007, and this past summer was Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix which I wrote about previously, here). I could get specific about Oracular Spectacular, but let's just say it's an album that makes you feel nice.

2010's early onset of warm weather has also brought the new album of the season, and it seems that MGMT have regained their summer throne (which I assume looks a lot like a lifeguard high chair). I like it when bands realize that the best follow-up albums sound nothing like the first. This record definitely has more of a live feel than Oracular, and a big part of that is the drums. I will argue this until my death, but raw sounding drums that are well played will always make a record sound better than cool parts loaded with tons of effects. they worked for The Flaming Lips, they made In Utero sound awesome and they helped Wilco gain respect. Raw drums played well. Remember that.

When MGMT recorded their first album, it was basically the brainchild of two people, Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden (which, to me, sound like fake names I would give interrogators if I was drunk and British). For Congratulations, they brought their live band into the studio with them, drummer Will Berman shared percussion duties with VanWyngarden, which seems to have been a fantastic idea. What I hear in Congratulations, is a band who already knew their way around a studio re-discovering themselves as a live band and instead of going the route of the big budget big sound sophomore album, they stripped the songs down to their core, brought in some friends, set up in a room, snapped on the microphones and just played.

The drumming on the first album sounded like it was from the future and the drumming on this album sounds like it wasn't influenced by any record that came out after 1981. It goes from hypnotic kraut-rock beats like the last few minutes of Siberian Breaks, to garage-y psych drums on Brian Eno (which has huge snare and tom rolls scattered throughout) to sort of a southern rock sway and swagger on Congratulations. Songs that are fast enough to dance too are slow enough to walk to, which makes it perfect for walking around outside or going apeshit on someone else's coffee table. That's a fine line.

I can't wait to listen to this, sit outside, drink beer and barbecue.

Bloc Party - Silent Alarm

2010-04-05T07:17:00.000-07:00

I always found Matt Tong's playing on Silent Alarm far surpassed his actual ability at the time, and it used to piss me off. One of the first things I did after hearing this was look up videos of them playing live, hoping to see him blasting through these songs with precision and endurance. Unfortunately some of the songs on youtube were slower than on the record, and Matt seemed uncomfortable, always trying to catch up to himself. It was very hit and miss. For example, this is their first television appearance.

Matt is really tight, everything is crisp and played almost exactly as the record. He feels a little rushed at times, but the song is crazy fast, so thats understandable.

Now, this is later on, on David Letterman.

In essence, this is a much easier song to play, but it's slower than on the album and his time is all over the place. Sometimes he rushes the hits, sometimes he lags on them. I can tell by his look that he's uncomfortable, and it comes through in his playing.

Now, this used to piss me off because I used to think it was unfair to your audience, you were misrepresenting your ability. It's easy to lay down incredible drumming when you can do take after take or take a break when you get tired, it's another thing to play those songs for two hours straight and maintain your ability.

Now I have a different point of view, mostly because I myself have put things on albums I could not play live. Matt was setting a bar for himself, giving himself a challenge and a goal within his band and within his own playing. I respect that. Sometimes it's not about the crowd, it's about your own feelings towards your playing. If you don't have any way to measure your progress it starts to feel as if your at a stalemate.

Future Bloc Party releases didn't impress me nearly as much with regard to their drumming, but I think it has more to do with the direction of the songwriting than Matt himself. By the time Bloc Party came to Halifax and I got to see them, Matt played everything almost picture perfect. A few time issues, a few dropped hits, but nothing that made me think that the show wasn't worth the forty dollars I spent on it.

The drumming on this album is fast, probably faster than 90% of other rock records, and it set a bar for everyone in terms of how fast you can play pop songs and still keep them precise and coherent. I'm sure that the transition of these songs from studio to stage took a larger toll on Matt, endurance is something that takes a long time to build up, and he's a tiny dude.

This is a great album to play along to. I like seeing how far I can get before my vision starts to blur.

White Zombie - Astro Creep: 2000

2010-03-31T06:04:00.000-07:00

When Ivan de Prume left White Zombie to start Burning Sound studios, they needed a drummer who could handle the new direction the songs were taking. Everything was getting faster and heavier with more industrial straight time rhythms, rather than the grooves that had made La Sexorcisto so successful. Everyone had their eyes on White Zombie, their low budget major label debut had surprised everyone, and with enough money and time to make the follow up, Astro Creep: 2000, they had to step it up, so they hired John Tempesta.

John was no stranger to heavy music, he had began his professional career by joining Exodus, eight years after their inception, moving on to Testament for their 1994 album Low. White Zombie did things differently than most metal bands at the time, it was metal, but it was also kind of dancey, kind of psychedelic and kind of psychobilly-esque. His parts had to have power but also had to keep the pulse going, and judging by the success of this album, he pulled it off nicely.

What I like about his playing on Astro Creep is the way he works a lot of toms into his playing. The beginning of Electric Head pt. 1 sounds like a big drum roll, but it takes shape as the basis for the rhythm, and when he returns to it later on in the song it has much more force behind it. Blur The Technicolor has a very tribal beginning, with deep, guttural toms leading into the first verse. Tempesta's kick/snare patterns are fairly standard, but it's the stuff he's doing between them that drive the songs. Super Charger Heaven keeps the snare on 2 and 4 for the entire song (except for the tag leading into the chorus), but his snare rolls and tom fills layer everything with just enough extra percussion to drive the song.

On Creature Of The Wheel the rhythm is jolted out of place by a five stroke tom roll that matches the guitar and bass. It tags the end of each bar in the verse but it never gets tiring, it keeps the listener focused and locked in. There are great examples of metal drumming all over this record, I Zombie, More Human Than Human, Blur The Technicolor, all are displays of drumming that is extravagant when it's supposed to be, but always locked on to the pulse of the songs.

Tempesta went on to play on Rob Zombie's solo albums, another Testament album and currently plays for The Cult. This record will live on as my favorite performance of his. White Zombie was just a slight enough deviance from his metal background to take advantage of his power and skill and warp it into their own brand of psycho-discobilly hard rock. I hope he made a lot of money for it, because he deserved it.

Now since I love seeing the pros make mistakes (hey, it happens to everyone) this first video shows Tempesta miss the hits at the start of More Human Than Human. Maybe his monitors were too low, maybe the keyboard loop was off, but either way the look on his face is that "aw, fuck" look that every drummer gets when he knows shits gone wrong. I love it.

Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke

2010-03-24T09:19:00.000-07:00

I fell asleep in the back of the van once on tour somewhere between Toronto and Thunder Bay. Actually I've fallen asleep a bunch of times in the back of the van on tour, but this particular time was when Phil Clark was playing in our band and he was in the middle of one of his Philip Clark Patented Power Drives that last between ten and twelve hours (the recipe for which, is canned sardines with mustard and a iPod playlist with at least 80% Jungle House). In between all of the boom-tchaka-thickaboom-tchak I awoke to the most wonderful sounding drums I had heard since Holly MacNarland's debut album (I'll get to that one someday, I promise). They were well recorded, with cool parts and with enough effects on them to push the right frequencies but without sounding stupid.

In a half dreamlike state I yelled "What is this? This is awesome" from the back seat. Everyone tuned around and yelled loudly, in unison "LADYHAWKE". They were in the middle of talking about the record when I interrupted asking about it. That's something that happens in our van a lot.

People like to assume that "musicians" or, better yet, "music" people have a hate on for pop music, and I guess it's a safe assumption. We can usually be found at parties bitching about Nickleback or Simple Plan or the Jonas Brothers or Canadian Idol and I'm no better, because I do that stuff to.

The thing that bothers me is that it's not that we don't like pop music, which is what people assume, and brush off as musical elitism, it's that we have a different idea of what pop music should be. Despite the fact that pop means popular, and obviously there is always the argument that it is catered towards a mass audience thereby making it a more dishonest and shallow type of music, it doesn't mean that you can't make it good. Some people make pop music, and from the get go they try to follow rules and criteria to make it fit into those guidelines in an attempt to market it to the largest possible amount of people. The end result is usually something fairly transparent and it leads to shirtless guys on TV singing about their feelings or five chicks with camel-toes wagging their asses around. Some people make music, and by being well written, comeposed, and well recorded with the right amount of creativity, talent and structure it appeals to a large amount of people. It's because of the components that it has mass appeal and it becomes pop music, not by playing into the conventions but by slightly shifting peoples ideas of what pop music actually is. If this wasn't true we would have never had the periods where classical music was pop music then jazz music was pop music then rock music became pop music, then new wave and punk became pop music then hard rock became pop music then hip hop became pop music and every shift had mini-scenes under them that contributed as well. Each of those movements had the actual important figures that put out important, great albums and then the hacks that capitalized on it.

My point is that pop music is not a bad thing. As long as things are done well (and if the average person had even slightly higher standards we would see an amazing shift in what comes out of your radio), you can have great records become extremely successful.You know, like Justin Tiberlake or Kings of Leon or that first Kelly Clarkson record. This Ladyhawke record is on par with all of those, and I have no idea why she is not part of my sister's CD collection.

You wanna know about the drums? Fine, the drums are awesome. The snares are beefy and there is lots of cool arrangements. Philipa Brown (aka Ladyhawke) got a bunch of different drummers for this album to suit the need of each song. Oh, and she wrote all the record herself too. She is an actual pop star, involved in her music from start to finish, making sure it's representative of herself.

I don't know where I am going with this. Phil Clark just flew away to Korea and it got me thinking about all the awesome stuff he had on his iPod and how much fun it was to hang out with him. Hell, the guy left and gave me lasers to use until Saturday. That's pretty awesome. I set them up in my room and now when I shut off the lights it looks like this:

If I could make one point out of all of this is people who are actually into music won't just dismiss something because of a label attached to it, they are going to analyze everything from the writing to the lyrics to the sound of the actual recording, and if it's one thing pop music has, it's well recorded songs. I have no problem listening to it, appreciating it and defending it as valid.

Now here are some awesome videos of Ladyhawke being awesome.

BDK Interview - Clive Deamer

2010-03-18T06:03:00.000-07:00

While doing some research for my last post, I stumbled upon Clive Deamer's Facebook page. Having no shame I sent him a message with a link to my review of his performance on Roseland NYC and asked if he would be willing to answer a few questions pertaining to it. The worst that could happen would be I get no reply, and things stay exactly the same on my blog. The best that could happen would be for him to take out some time from his busy schedule to answer them, which is exactly what happened, so here it is.

1. What sort of adjustments (if any) did you make to your playing once the orchestra became involved?

The Portishead drum sound is based on a very small dynamic range. The albums were recorded with me playing at a tiny level, a stick moving 1 or 2 inches from the head or cymbal, acoustic instrument volume.

I also discovered the Zildjian Hal Blaine drum stick was the perfect stick for this kind of playing, I've used it ever since although Zildjian have discontinued it. I remember arriving at Roseland Ballroom and someone had taken it upon themselves to erect one of those ghastly Perspex screens for my kit. They must have assumed "English group - Orchestra - The drummer will be too loud". Before I even sat at the kit I explained we wouldn't need the screen.

2. You and Jim Barr (bass player extraordinaire) seem to be fused as one when you are playing, how long have you been performing together?

Jim is a fantastic Bass player, he has the mind to feel where the pulse is, which is not necessarily the same as hearing the notes being played. He understands the function of the part/parts being played. Jim and I have our own band called Get The Blessing (click the link to check them out).

3. I'm assuming you have endorsements for equipment, what was your main focus in selecting cymbals or drums?

To ensure we got "The Drum Sound" I simply used the same gear I used for recording the albums. The kit was my 1960's Gretsch sparkle, and the same cymbals used on the session. I can't remember exactly but there was definitely a 20" Paiste Full Crash that I used as a crash ride, Zildjian Hi Hats, I can't remember exactly which ones. Heads were Diplomat Remo on the toms. Can't remember the Bass Drum head, Ambassador or Diplomat on snares, I used the 3 or 4 snare drums from the sessions too, Gretsch, Ludwig, Premier.

4. Are there any slight mistakes or slip ups somewhere on the recording that you know about, but no one would ever notice just by listening? You know, something to prove you are not actually a well-crafted, slow tempo drumming robot?

I've only listened to it once or twice so I can't answer that. Again, you have to adjust your thinking because of the musical context, Portishead was based on drum loops I'd already played, so I was indeed being a slow tempo drumming robot, I just tried to do it with commitment and the appropriate mental intent. Mental intent is what counts.

5. What is your best memory from the entire session?

My son was at Roseland, he was about two years old. My wife and I bought him a Buzz Lightyear to distract him on the plane flight. I put Buzz on top of an amp and you see him briefly in the DVD (after the show Buzz got very drunk and disgraced himself!). My son is 14 now and thinks it's really cool his Buzz Lightyear is on the DVD.

So there you have it folks. Don't say random e-mails/Facebook messages never work. I'm living proof. While Clive is busy changing his Facebook privacy settings who knows who I'll randomly contact next. Watch out Steve Gadd.

Portishead - Roseland NYC

2010-03-16T17:12:00.000-07:00

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.