This overview has been simmering here for a while, with the possibly too ambitious goal to inform our readers on all new solo percussion albums, while at the same time taking the time to listen to them all, and do some other listening in between. We recently reviewed Devin Gray's "Most Definitely", and that's the only solo percussion album we reviewed for quite a while. As can be expected, we have the full spectrum of solo percussion albums - from jazz to modern music, from drums to melodic percussion, from acoustic to electronically altered percussion. Listening to solo percussion albums requires some special attention and attention span as well.
Andrew Cyrille - Music Delivery/Percussion (Intakt, 2023)
Master drummer Andrew Cyrille's first album as a leader was a solo record: "What About" from 1969. His second solo album "The Loop" dates from 1978. It is a real treat to listeners to now have his third solo album in his very long and successful career. Most of the eleven tracks are his own compositions, although he also presents us his percussion version of Amina Claudine Meyers' "Jumping In The Sugar Bowl" and John Carter's "Enter From The East". Cyrille offers us tracks in 7/4 and 6/8 and other odd meters, performed on a variety of instruments, presenting the level of variation that is needed to keep things interesting and refreshing. "I wanted to have a variety of percussion instruments in the compositions. So I was thinking of melodies that could be played with tambourines, bells, cymbals, crotales, gongs, and mallets," he writes in the liner notes.
Cyrille emphasises the melodic aspect of his art. This is not always obvious to hear at first listen, but keep up the effort and keep listening. There are moments of fun, of small side-stories, with more dramatic excursions and a wonderful sense of fluidity. No wonder he's still so good after so many decades of musicianship. Magic at work!
Hamid Drake – Dedications (Corbett vs Dempsey, 2022)
I think that no other drummer features in so many of our reviews as Hamid Drake, and possibly rightly so (I tried to count them, then gave up). We all like his technical skills, his incredible sense of rhythm - why does his drums always seems to dance? - his spirituality and especially his understanding of other musicians. Now, for the first time in his long career, he offers us a solo percussion album, with all pieces dedicated to some of his favourite artists: "A dedication in spirit to all those who have influenced, helped, opened, nurtured, shown love for, and cared for me along the way."
The liner notes mention that John Corbett "began petitioning Drake to record an unaccompanied session twenty years ago", which - as a result of the pandemic - started to get real form. A prepared studio recording did not satisfy the drummer, and in 2021 he tried again, now without any preparation, letting the music flow.
Obviously, it can only produce what is already there, in the incredible mental track record of rhythms and techniques and loose ideas that get shape here in the creative moment of performing. At times I had to laugh out loud just because of the incredible fun of listening to his playing. And it's not that his music is 'fun': it's just so incredibly complex, intricate, compelling and played with such ease and spontaneity. I remember that Ken Vandermark mentions in the liner notes to one of their collaborative albums (I think 'Spaceways Inc - Version Soul'), that he asked Drake to play a reggae rhythm, upon which Drake replied "which one?" of the few dozen that he knew. This is what you get here too. A jubilant demonstration of percussive delight.
Sofia Borges - Trips & Findings (4DA Records, 2022)
Sofia Borges is a Portuguese percussionist residing in Berlin, who considers herself a sound artist, equally comfortable in free improvisation, jazz, modern music as in theatre and dance.
On her first solo album - a double CD - she presents four lengthy compositions, clocking between fifteen and twenty-five minutes. She describes each track briefly in the liner notes, so I won't repeat this here. Suffice to give her summary: "It shows four sketches from my travel notebook: what I observe and forget, what I discover, lose and find again, what I listen to, what I touch, and what strikes me. Each of these pages expresses different facets of my work".
She performs on percussion, drums, amplified objects, toys, field recording and electronics. The advantage of the length of the compositions is the possibility to develop the music, to make it evolve and progress like on a musical journey, and the variety of instruments allow her to create encounters, surprises, changes and twists on the path she has taken with the composition.
Especially on the second track, the percussive sound is so electronically altered that the main sound becomes noise, and field recordings and actual performance merge into a broader sonic landscape.
Her art becomes even more unusual on the second CD, on which toys - sounding like chimes or little bells - are like fresh rain drops on a dark road. The music is dense, fascinating to follow and to submerge yourself in.
This is as far away from jazz as possible - with the exception of the improvisation - but worth listening to. You could call her a creative spontaneous noisemaker. She generates her own universe, with her own musical vision and voice, and I can only recommend it.
We know Ramon Prats primarily from his collaborations with Spanish free improv luminaries such as Agustí Fernández and Albert Cirera or European ones such as Axel Dörner.
The album is rich and fully acoustic, some of the purest recordings of percussion that you can hear, without premeditation, without concepts or ideas, but spontaneous movement of transitions between beats, possibly surprising the artist himself at times, who lets his instrument take the lead.
Vasco Trilla - A Constellation of Anomaly (Thanatosis, 2023)
The liner notes specify: "Russian flat bells bowed and played with vibrating objects, a timpani full of wind-up music boxes and spiced up by a transducer speaker, an old zither hit as a drum with two snare drums as resonators, Iranian round bells mixed with gamelan strips, styrofoam and triangles....". This intro just to give you an idea on what to expect from Vasco Trilla's creative exploration of percussive sounds and possibilities. Like no other percussionist, he understands the challenge to unleash the narrative power of his tools, instead of just being a subservient rhythmic indicator.
"Opaque Ephiphanies" is dark like a doomsday soundtrack with many layers of dense sound, while "We Are Such Stuff The Foams Are Made Of" has a more organic and natural texture, and "The Shaking Hand That Leaves A Mark" (both 1 & 2) have a fresh chime-like quality. "Chronocycle Graph" is mysterious with its repetitive theme. Despite the variation in instruments, approaches and moods, the album is still coherent.
Trilla is an expert musical explorer, who returns from his long journey in the broad universe of sound, to tell us the stories of everything he encountered, things we have never heard of, and which he is eager to share with us, and that we are listening to, full of wonder and anticipation for what is coming.
Taiko Saito - Tears Of A Cloud (Trouble In The East, 2023)
Taiko Saito plays marimba and vibraphone. Known from her recent collaboration with Satoko Fujii on "Futari" (2020). Both instruments allow for melodies and harmonic development, in contrast with drums. This makes the album more accessible by definition, yet Saito's playing is also excellent: technically strong, musically creative, full of variation of aesthetic beauty, yet also unassuming and humble. The music dominates, not the pyrotechnics.
Martin Daigle is a Canadian interdisciplinary artist involved in audio-visual and electro-acoustic art creation, performance, and research. On this album he performs two compositions, one from Pierre Alexandre Tremblay and one from Sylvain Pohu. The drum sounds are all electronically changed to design sonic landscapes. The first composition, 'La Rage', is broken down into thirty small segments, each with their own character and mode of delivery, resulting in a suite-like structure, and with drums that are sometimes played in a straightforward acoustic mode, although you never know how the sounds will be altered next. The second composition is more linear, slowly developing as a more panoramic soundscape.
This will not be to everyone's taste, but that should not deter you from giving it a try. There are lots of new things to enjoy on the album.
Yorgos Dimitriadis - 14 20 22 (Trouble In The East Records, 2023)
Only a few weeks ago we reviewed an album - "Being Five" - with Greek drummer Yorgos Dimitriadis, and a few years ago his other solo percussion album "Kopfkino". Next to percussion, he also uses electronics and field recordings, including voice, to generate soundscapes that go beyond what you would expect from a solo percussion album. With the exception of "Kyria Aliki", most pieces are slow and move forward in a linear, almost panoramic fashion. The overall mood is somber and full of drama.
You can appreciate the artist for his singular vision and the coherence of the album.
Vasco Trilla & Ra Kalam Bob Moses - Singing Icons (Astral Spirits, 2023)
Not really a solo percussion album, but a duo percussion album by two master percussionists, Vasco Trilla and Ra Kalam Bob Moses. Or let me correct this too. Both musicians created a solo album - Trilla in Barcelona, Ra Kalam Bob Moses in Boston - during the pandemic, which they then polished and refined into one single album.
Trilla plays drums, timpani, flat bells, clock chimes, vibrators, magnetic tape and assorted instruments, and Moses drums, bass, native flute, congas, dumbek, melodica, vocals and metallic instruments.
They treat us to sixteen compositions/improvisations, more than 85 minutes long, that generate long drone-like soundscapes, dense and intense, richly ornated with percussive effects and dramatic cymbals. Luckily, some tracks have recognisable and high power drumming, such as "Universal Bounce", while others, such as "Whales Slow Dancing" are on the opposite side of the spectrum.
Not for the faint of heart, but a worthwhile journey.
Giacomo Salis & Paolo Sanna - Acoustic Studies For Sardinian Bells (Falt, 2023)
This I like. We reviewed Sardinian percussionists Giacomo Salis and Paolo Sanna only once so far, with their collaboration with Jeph Jerman on "Kio Ge". I think they must have released over a dozen albums together, as if they are inseparable.
Both musicians collected fifteen different kinds of Sardinian cow bells, only to investigate all the possible sounds they could get out of them. This may sound like a purely experimental endeavour, but luckily they use their findings to create music that can stand on its own, with sounds that develop, intensify, become denser or more light-textured, that stretch into drone-like sounds, or otherwise crackle and sparkle. The whole albums is only twenty-four minutes long.
Denis Fournier - Je Suis Caché Sous Ma Peau (Vent du Sud, 2023)
We know French drummer Denis Fournier from his collaborations on The Brigde Session's "Escape Lane" and his collaboration with JC Jones on "Whatever It Takes To Make A Sound". His previous solo album "La Voix Des Tambours / The Voices Of The Drums" already dates from 2015.
On this album he brings thirteen pieces, improvised and composed, of straightforward acoustic drumming. There are pieces where he starts quite simply, but then he starts adding beats, shifting the rhythms and the accentuation, until you've lost the technicality of what he does, only to admire the sounds he produces. On some tracks he starts reading poetry, in the kind of priestly declamation that I've become allergic to, but I know some people like this, so everyone his or her choice. At other times ("Je sais que la paix n’existe pas") he sings , like a tribal incantation, which I still like more, but could also do without. He also plays piano on two short pieces.
In all honesty, he is at his best when he's just drumming, inventive, rich, unassuming.
The CD also comes with a DVD filmed by a crew who followed him for two years from the process of creation till the recording of the album.
On "Ring", American percussionist Justin DeHart presents the complete solo percussion works of John Bergamo, a modern classical composer and his mentor. He plays on vibraphone, marimba, timpani, drums and other percussion instruments, which leads to a great variety in the overall sound. The compositions themselves vary from the extremely short - 24 seconds - to thirteen minutes.
Considering that this is also not my preferred genre, the music is serious, cerebral, full of drama and with little to enjoy. That is possibly more the result of the compositions than because of the quality delivery by DeHart.
Something that is striking, though subtle, about Devin Gray's latest recording, a solo drum with electronics outing, is the attention to visual detail. With few exceptions, from the digital music perspective, artwork has gotten the short end of the stick, but here, each track has a different piece of imagery associated with it. Some are abstract, some figurative, while others remix elements and shapes in different permutations, each seems as purposefully chosen and precise as each track's sonic detail.*
That's kind of the thing right? A solo drum record really benefits from absorbing itself in details. Feel, of course is one part, but more maybe so is how the patterns arranged and played. Now, add the pre-programmed digital elements and the patterns grow more complex, the details in how they interlock with the acoustic elements even more important. Gray has obviously thought hard about how the two elements interact and in the end has created an intriguing and visceral blend.
The album begins with a few short tracks. 'Hunker Down' kicks off with a quiet but urgent clatter of cymbals and a low frequency rumble. Here, one can hear the layers but by the second track, "Pull to Refresh," they have merged, Gray's acoustic hits and rolls enveloped in the electronics. "Bad WiFi" continues the trend, this time with intentional interruptions that suggest a bad connection indeed. The title track is built around a polyrhythm with the electronics adding a depth and sometimes a blur to the sound. Now, listen closely to hear how extended percussive techniques blend with slight effects (track 12, the delightfully named 'Doom Scrolling'), or none at all, like the follow up 'Only the Poets (for Daniel Levine) in which an austere drum roll grows more complex, underscored with a simple bass drums (Levine was a musician and collaborator of Gray's who tragically passed away last year).
Most of the tracks are short, one to two minutes, but two towards the later half of the recording clock in at around the 20 minutes mark. The first, "Solider On, Milford," starts with a bit of clatter but builds quickly in structure and momentum. Gray covers the drum kit, bringing the energy to a peak at about the halfway minute mark and then continues to builds the tension through a brief scrape with exploratory sounds to an ever higher level. The other epic, "Tough Love," takes a more textured approach, and over the span of the track, Gray frames his extended, effected cymbal work with fine textured cushion of space.
In the liner notes, Gray writes, "listening is the most important form of communication we have, its effects are greater than speaking. You will learn more by allowing yourself to be truly open, focused, and by challenging your everyday listening beyond what your ears and mind are capable of comprehending"
This is absolutely spot on. A solo percussion album can be a hard sell, but Gray hits all the right notes here, giving us something to listen to that goes beyond expectations of a solo percussion. Weaving his precise drumming deftly with an assortment of effects and live electronics to craft a modern, well, balanced, personal and engaging album.
* Though the focus here is on the digital version, Most Definitely is also available on CD and LP - which also feature the same attention to details, booklets, color vinyl - and are in quite limited editions of 50 each.
When musicians go solo, their space expands and they confront (among
other things) the choice to fill it with torrential sounds or to build
architectural sounds that (hopefully) will make that space meaningful. This
is the case of Filippo Abrate's solo percussion work, which is the first
release of a new-born label MUPE (created by Filippo Abrate and the upright
bass player Marco Bellafiore ). Young musicians at work trying to develop
their global idea of music: something worth of our interest.
When declaring his influences in the field of solo recording Filippo Abrate
mentions Keith Jarrett’s Vienna Concert and Paul Bley’s Open to Love for their use of space and narrative tension they
create; and use of space and narrative tension are building blocks in the
making of this work.
Warm to Become
is made of five pieces that use different compositional approaches: two
composed pieces (Bright eyes, pure heart andspirit, spirit, spirit), two pure improvisations ( improvisation n.5 and Night Dance) and an image-guided
improvisation (ancient cerimony-spusyn ) which makes up
the soundtrack for the not-yet-released short film Masquerade by
Raffella Tomellini.
Often, the sounds seem to come from a distance, soft, allusive with a
pictorial quality that is well represented by the cover of the CD. At the
same time, particularly when the drums prevail, the sounds show a proximity
that creates a narrative flow, a word-like consistency.
The author says: “[in the composed pieces] I choose in advance the
materials I want to analyze in an abstract way as if they were colours,
than I try to connect them in an intense and coherent way”
Bright Eyes, Pure Heart
and Spirit, Spirit, Spirit share the same three parts structure
and both exhibit a story-telling attitude in which the different sections
create contrasts and continuities that accompany the listener to the heart
of the matter.
In Ancient Cerimony-Spusyn the evocative side prevails
with gongs, harmonic sounds and a sense of distance. It would be
interesting to see it coupled with the images it refers to.
The two free improvisations, improvisation n.5 and Night Dance, go into an explorations of the different
possibilities that the raw material of percussions offer: wood, metal, skin
spaced in a rhythmic dialogue with silence.
So in conclusion what we have is the debut solo work of a young musician
that exhibits an excellent control of his materials and shows ideas
pointing to interesting directions but, above all, it offers us good music
to listen to.
The story has already been told a few times: when Peter Brötzmann belatedly
celebrated his 80th birthday with a concert weekend at Café Ada in his
hometown of Wuppertal, he invited many of the usual suspects who have
accompanied him throughout his musical life - Hamid Drake, Full Blast, Mats
Gustafsson (to name just the most prominent). However, one name on the list
was completely unknown to almost everyone in the audience: Camille Émaille.
What was even more surprising was the fact that she was introduced with a
percussion solo set. When she entered the stage, some people in the
audience (mainly a bit aged and male) were relatively unimpressed and had
no intention of interrupting their conversations. But after 30 seconds at
the latest, most people’s jaws literally dropped. Émaille set off an
incredible firework of ideas, unheard even in the world of free
improvisation. At the end of her 25-minute performance, there were standing
ovations. She was definitely the (shooting) star of the festival.
Émaille was born in 1993 in Nice and studied at the Musik-Akademie of Basel
(Switzerland) with Christian Dierstein on contemporary music and with Fred
Frith on free improvisation. She received a bachelor degree in percussion with
excellence in 2018. In 2016 she was a guest scholar at Mills College and
studied there with William Winant, Fred Frith and Roscoe Mitchell. In 2017, she released her first solo album on the Portuguese label Creatives
Sources. Recently, Èmaille has worked with many artists from varying
fields, such as video and muppet theatre, and she has played in lots of musical
projects like Oxke Fixu (a duo with Xavière Fertin on clarinet), Ghoast (a
duo with American saxophonist Tom Weeks), ESCARGOT (her quintet with
Timothée Quost on trumpet, Xavière Fertin on clarinet, Louis Frères on
e-bass and Tom Malmendier on drums) and in a trio with Hans-Peter Hiby
(saxes) and Fred Lonberg-Holm (cello). When she’s on tour she travels in
her own van, because she only uses her own drum and percussion set, she
doesn’t use sets that are provided to her.
Camille Émaille’s drum set
Camille Émaille - Belisama - The Metallic Roots (Takuroku, 2021/22)
If you’ve ever seen Camille Émaille’s percussion set, you’ve surely noticed
the many metal elements. On her new album Belisama - The Metallic Roots she
concentrates only on these instruments like gongs, cowbells, glockenspiels,
agogôs, metal blocks, and many more for 53 minutes. Even if she is not the
first or only percussionist to use such so-called extended materials, a
radical focus on them is at least rare. In doing so, Émaille’s closeness to
new classical music becomes obvious on Belisama, often the tones are
produced by shaking or scratching and scraping sounds, the “instrument“ is
rarely hit. In such a consistency this opens up an unheard sonic universe,
the 53 minutes just fly by. Émaille’s talent for building tension also
contributes to this. Once the listener has made himself comfortable in the
sound space, he is torn out of it again by an unforeseen element and
steered in another direction almost out of the blue. Belisama begins
meditatively with long gong intervals that are not quite in time. After
five minutes, a sort of drone joins in. This intro lasts seven minutes
before another instrument appears. Slightly modified, the last three
minutes take up this idea again, the rhythmic and tonal figure bookends the
improvisation. In between, Émaille explores a smorgasbord of sonic
possibilities like a curious child: her percussion set rattles, squeaks,
clatters, hisses, clangs echoes, reverberates, scrapes. Here and there
acoustic effects are deliberately used, they sound like electronic
processing.
Belisama is a radical experiment, Émaille throws herself back to her
origins. In the lines notes she says that she’s “going back to (…) my home,
inside myself“.
Fascinating, new, and adventurous in the best sense.
Belisama - The Metallic Roots is available as a download and as a CD. You
can download it on the Cafe Oto website:
If you want the CD, you might write her an e-mail.
Listen to an excerpt here:
Le UN - Le Havre (UNREC, 2022)
Camille Émaille is an outstanding solo performer but she’s also a great
team player. Her duo album with Tom Weeks is excellent and at a concert I
was lucky enough to see on their Germany tour in September she was the
driving force in a trio with Hans Peter Hiby and Fred Lonberg-Holm. What is
more, even in a 26-people large ensemble like Le UN her individual voice
stands out in the improvisation.
Le UN is an unusual orchestra anyway. Musically located somewhere between
the chamber music philosophy of King Übü Örchestrü and the expressive
approach of the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, it develops a unique sonic
and improvisational power. The current version of the band was initiated by
bassist David Chiesa in 2019 and the members self-conception is to act as
an improvisation society. Apart from Émaille musicians like Sophie Agnel on
piano and Michel Doneda on soprano saxophone are the most prominent names
of this spectacular outfit. As to the liner notes of Le Havre, their first
album, each member is involved in the artistic realisation as much as in
the social, non-hierarchical organisation of the ensemble. The idea is that
the individual voice is not lost in the collective, but that everyone
participates equally in the orchestral improvisation. The most important
aspect is that all the individuals contribute with their uniqueness to the
success of the whole, without hindering its collective character. In this
case Émaille works as the powerhouse of the orchestra, together with Benoit
Kilian she is the coachman on the coach box, driving the orchestra so that
their tension doesn’t get lost. Le Havre was recorded during a three-day
residency at Le Volcan, Scène Nationale du Havre, in April 2021, where the
band had a three-day residency. What you get to hear is work-in-progress, a
music full of abysses and emotional refractions. It’s one of this year’s
absolute surprises.
Le Havre is available as a limited LP, which also contains a CD (with bonus
tracks).
Also recommendable from Camille Émaille’s back catalogue:
Camille Émaille & Tom Weeks - Ghoast (2017)
Ghoast is an almost classic saxophone/drum duo album that showcases
Émaille’s strengths nicely. She supports Weeks whether he’s exploring the
sonic limits of the saxophone or blowing wildly. A good example is “Devil
Mountain“.
Ghoast is available as a cassette and as a download.
If you want to get to know Camille Emaille’s acoustic and sonic world in
the most ideal way, her solo debut is your best bet. 46 minutes she ignites
all the stops of her incredible musical cosmos.
Bekkos is available as a CD and a download. You can listen to it and
download it here.
The following review was written before knowing about Christos’ sudden death due to COVID, which was announced by his family this past weekend. There was a small interview that never materialized, and I haven’t changed a word since hearing the sad news. Aside from his work internationally as improvisor and percussionist, Christos was also a dedicated teacher and composer for film and theater. This text is dedicated to his memory.
This solo album from Greek percussionist Christos Yermenoglou is free jazz, even though it doesn’t need to show it. Freed from any restraint, Yermenoglou presents a solo effort that is mostly looking towards the East (there are similarities in this orient feeling with the duos of Don Cherry with Ed Blackwell) but, definitely, as forward looking as any good free jazz album.
Birth is playful, sometimes totally energetic, other times soothing and calm. As someone can notice from the front and back cover, Yermenoglou utilizes a lot of small percussion instruments, other small reeds, toys, too many to mention, too many to ask what is what. Enough to make this album a one man band, a totally improvised effort. There’s a constant flow of ideas, sounds and energy. There is no second wasted in both sides of the vinyl, as it came out only on this form. The Greek percussionist seems eager and willing to start from scratch: each new idea is explored to the full, paving the way for the next one, sometimes connected, other times proving something fully new.
He defies the current trend (and I am not commenting that in a demeaning way) of percussionists who resort on electronic manipulation on solo efforts. His approach, on timbre, melody and rhythm (in sound making in general) is acoustic only. Some may comment that he is a bit old fashioned. I do not agree plus every track on Birth is working. The drum set is rarely the main focus and this is a challenge for every drummer I guess. Instead of this, by utilizing so many different sound sources, every time he takes a willing risk.
Yermenoglou has worked with a lot of important name in the field of contemporary improvisation. All those small tracks build a unison and Birth feels like new departure for him and the album is, I believe, appropriately titled.
Will Glaser is an in-demand drummer and percussionist who has played
alongside Soweto Kinch, Dame Cleo Laine, Kit Downes, Nikki Iles, Dinosaur,
Martin Speake, Yazz Ahmed, Eddie Parker, Freddie Gavita, Liam Noble and Sam
Leak, to name a just a few fellow jazz musicians. He has been involved with
Sam Eastmond's Spike Orchestra, Sam Rapley's Fable, Union Division with
Moss Freed and many more. In 2020 he released New River Ramble with James
Allsopp. Some Drum Sounds is a solo recording released May 6th.
'Crazy Hour' opens the album and is aptly titled. Sounds of children
playing, people talking, and various percussive sounds are railroaded out
by an improvisation across the top on djembe, the tight skin offering
echoed sounds that resonate deep within the barrel of the drum. The piece
is built through improvisation on some of the rhythmic and melodic ideas.
As the track grows and builds, the textural quality improves and deepens,
making this a terrific opener and introduction to the album.
'Broom with a View' begins with gentle drum hits and nuanced phrases, the
rhythm patterns set and then worked around resulting in changing dynamics,
with the pauses becoming as meaningful as the strikes. The rhythm
intensifies in the second third with a free improvised section before
returning to more established rhythms in the final phrases.
'Durations 1: In house Heckle' is the first of three tracks where Glaser
duets with himself. Glaser describes these as "structured by different
durations of time that are a loose compositional tool to structure
improvisation and create chance moments." Those chance moments are
introduced in the form of gongs, whispering touches and brush strokes which
impart a sense of exploration and a brief delve into the drummer's mind.
Some ideas are whimsical - a gong strike here, a cymbal there, whilst
others are random, and ideas flow around the rhythmic patterns created.
'Panglossian People' is a track based around a 12 bar structure. The
introduction, which precedes the composed track, is three minutes plus of
rhythm workings that take several journeys across the basic structure,
finding variations each time. The track itself is similar in length to the
introduction and based on the 12 bar structure still but with freely
improvised sections. The structure is such that the listener is carried on
mesmeric pathways that differ and vary, with clear references right through
to the original construct.
'A Hymn for Him' is a dedication to American jazz drummer Milford Graves
and is a loosely improvised rondo form with the theme alternating with
atmospheric improvised sections creating a reflective number. The final
phrases work into a regulated rhythmic pattern which is mesmeric and
engaging.
'Durations 2: Self-Talk' is subtle yet inspired by its rhythmic changes and
generous ebbs and flows, the contrasts creating subtle changes in
atmosphere, which are effective and vast, from the resonant bass to the
trinkling cymbals. 'Scribbles' is short, fast and manages to get huge
contrasts of tone and pattern into just over a minute of free drumming,
whilst the strangely titled ' Porcupine Herder' begins with spaced-out
beats and builds into a multi-layered soundboard. ' Durations 3: Didactic
Discord' explores different rhythm patterns, sounds and techniques both
freely improvised and structured.
Of the recording, Glaser says, "I'm really proud of this record. It doesn't
get much more personal than this, and it was lovely to find ways of
expressing my relationship with the instrument and focus on what I love.
It's a strange little thing and hopefully comes across with the warmth I
had in mind. It's all heavily improvised but with a few little tweaks."
The warmth and exploration of the drums and percussive sound come across
loud and clear. What is really good about the tracks are the rhythmic
patterns, diversions, returns, and improvisations built around structured
foundations. This introduces familiarity to parts of the tracks, which
means whether you enjoy freely improvised music or prefer a more structural
format, this has appeal.
An engaging listen and a formidable recording. It is released initially on
Bandcamp, with further platforms becoming available soon.
Scott Clark – This Darkness (Out of Your Head Records, 2021) ****
Apart from a few references on OOYH materials (he is involved with the
label), I was largely unfamiliar with Scott Clark’s work. A quick search
online, however, shows the drummer and composer has released a few albums
as leader for Clean Feed (Bury My Heart and To Now), and
he seems to have another ten or so releases under his belt. He is young,
but seasoned. And, as This Darkness reveals, he has a striking
musical maturity, evident in his patience and precision.
The Darkness
is a departure for OOYH, which hitherto has released numerous more
straightforwardly “free jazz” and contemporary composition/improv releases.
On this album, the track titles are an excerpt from a Rilke poem, “Let this
Darkness Be a Belltower,” a poem about perseverance and adaptation, finding
one’s self and purpose in a period of gloomy uncertainty. The titles read:
“Quiet friend/who has come so far/let this darkness/be a belltower/and you
the bell.” Quite fitting for this loose verbal score, The Darkness
is an album of gloom and gloam, but also of discovery and, toward the end,
something approaching clarity. The sonic range extends from Quiet Friend,
who evokes Kraftwerk’s quirky techno-ritualism to minimalist metallic clang
and drum-set scrapes, rattles, and thuds to the final track, And you the
Bell, which consists of tempered full-set work. As many solo percussion
albums, The Darkness narrates a story, or trace a journey, in this
case through tenebrous spaces.
The quarantine inspiration may seem obvious. However, recorded a year too
early in May 2019, This Darkness seems to speak either of a more
personal and intimate experience of the lugubrious, or of a wider,
non-Covid shadow cast across the land. Either way, cue that fatalistically
optimistic epic line from New Speedway Boogie: “One way or another, this
darkness got to give.” This Darkness seems to be making a similar
statement of resigned resilience albeit in a more abstract, amelodic shape.
This Darkness
is available as a digital download and vinyl, which is currently being
pressed.
Susie Ibarra – 7.11.19 (Otoroku, 2020) ****½
I had not listened to any new Susie Ibarra material since the mid-2000’s,
when she went on hiatus from recording. A quick internet search indicates
this break was brief, and, by the mid-2010’s, she was back on the scene.
(Incidentally, this is around the time I caught her and Evan Parker on a
magical night at the old Stone.) Ibarra had always stuck out to me as a
drummer of unusual vision in the free jazz world. She had the chops, but
she always seemed to be pulling her drums into a more progressive (prog
minus the rock) direction than many of my favorite drummers who were happy
to keep digging deeper into the jazz and clangorous avant-garde traditions.
Like Clark, Ibarra seems more interested in the development of the piece
than virtuosic eruptions or catch-all machine-gun strafe. Instead, 7.11.19 undulates. I have listened several times now and the
40-plus minutes fly by. Or rather, time stretches. Or, something happens
wherein I simply get lost in the performance. 7.11.19 has a time
bending ceremony to it, but Ibarra takes the performance beyond the
conventional repetition and layering with playing that is subtly commanding
and varied, and affecting. This is no small feat. Although I love the idea
of isolating an instrument and pushing it to its limits, solo percussion
albums often appeal to me more in theory than in practice. Despite some
strong efforts (and too many exceptions to name), they too often fall into
the background for me after a few listens. This is not the case with
Ibarra. She plays with unwavering concentration and meticulous attention to
the details of textures and timbres that is all the more impressive given
that, as far as I know, this is improvised. To be honest, I am not sure
what exactly Ibarra does differently than others, here. Maybe it is her
confident restraint, and attention to bricolage as process rather than
product. Maybe it is her still firm free jazz chops, which inform her
playing more than adorn it. Whatever it is, Ibarra’s got it. Just take a
listen.
Is it possible to create meaningful music with only percussion? The answer is clearly yes. But the challenge to keep non-percussionists motivated to keep listening is high. The absence of any lyrical or harmonic instruments is a barrier to many. But I recommend to listen to some of the following albums, released in the last year: some solo albums and some duo albums, and one that is even not only percussion but one that still might fit in this overview.
In the last few years, we have seen how progressive music opened towards more open sonic environments, offering a new world of sound in which texture and timbre become more important than rhythm and harmonies. This increases the opportunities to explore, because the boundaries are gone, and it allows for musicians to deepen the possibilities and potential of their instruments. I assume that especially for percussionists, this opens new aural vistas, as you hear on the following albums.
Various Artists - Free Percussion (Tsss Tapes, 2019)
Let's start with the most exclusive one: a wonderful compilation of what modern percussionists have to say with their instruments. The artists are - in this sequence: Claire Rousay, Rie Nakajima, Chris Dadge, Håkon Berre, Ted Byrnes, Tim Daisy, Will Guthrie, Simon Camatta, Kevin Corcoran, Skyler Rowe, Francesco Covarino and João Lobo. Each one of them performs on one track, and as the liner notes say, using:"Snares, bells, sticks, cymbals, pinecones, rattles, brushes, bass drums, mallets & other objects that make a sound if you hit them, stroke them, let them bounce". Each artist has his or her own approach, yet all music is thoughtful and carefully paced, creating sonic environments rather than rhythmic explorations in which percussive sounds merge with silence, scrapings, stretched tones, combining minimalism with more expressive moments. A mixed tape for sure, but with unity. Listen and buy from Bandcamp. Tim Daisy - New Works For Solo Percussion (Relay, 2019)
Chicagoan drummer Tim Daisy is of course well known to the readers of this blog. He has performed with musicians such as Ken Vandermark, Steve Swell, Dave Rempis, Jeb Bishop, Mars Williams, Jaimie Branch, and many more across the continents. It's no wonder that he is in such demand. He is a drummer with skills and ideas, which he already sufficiently demonstrated in his many collaborations.
On this album, he takes the time to share his own thoughts on new possibilities. He combines different styles and types of drumming, sometimes rhythmic, playing different instruments at the same time. The long opening track demonstrates it all: marimba, toms, crotales, woodblocks, cymbals and gongs create a sonic universe that oscillates between tension and fun, between intensity and calm, between pyrotechnics and tenderness. I think especially drummers will revel in the new approaches that are presented here, yet there's sufficient variation and innovation to keep non-drummers interested.
Michael Zerang – Assyrian Caesarean (Holidays, 2019)
Michael Zerang is mentioned in no less than 52 articles published on this blog, often in ensembles with Brötzmann, McPhee, Rempis, Swell and other free jazz luminaries. To my knowledge, this is his first solo album.
Zerang switches between percussive moments and sonic explorations by generating lengthened noisy sounds from his instrument, by rubbing the skins of his toms, or the sides of his cymbals with a variety of tools. His "Song for Mourners" is a good example of the latter, and it demonstrates the percussionist's skill to generate expressive sounds with varying pitches out of his drum kit, by itself already an interesting feat, yet it also has artistic value, as it offers a weird and unusual listening experience, one that you can get lost in, as in "Threnody for a Desert Storm", a multilayered piece full of tension and foreboding. On "Capitalism's Last Shred", the noise is utterly irritating, but I guess that's the point considering the track's title.
If you prefer straight drumming, the listener will definitely enjoy compositions such as "Assyrian Caesarean", a rhythmic delight full of shifting patterns played on his toms with just a few hi-hat sounds for contrast. The most complex percussive piece is "The Swift and Sordid Purification of Jimi Jihad", a rumbling improvisation full of variety and dozens of little things happening at the same time.
Zerang, himself of Assyrian descent (Iraq/Iran), creates a haunting, personal story that is both musical and political: thanks to his skills and inventiveness he transcends the natural limitations of his instrument, expanding its range and musical potential while at the same time evocating the pain and destruction in the Middle East.
Peter Orins - Happened By Accident (Circum, 2019)
We've come across Peter Orins as the drummer of French-Japanese Kaze quartet or in some of Satoko Fujii's Orchestras, as well as being a member of th French Circum Grand Orchestra. Classically trained, he takes his music even a step beyond jazz on this solo album. He explores textures and sounds, influenced by minimalism yet at the same time - as on the first piece - creating quite a dense and warm multilayered sound that shifts in intensity. Other tracks are built around silence with the percussion instruments expressing themselves in unheard languages, chirping or twittering, scraping or whistling, or once even a deep bass resonance coming from who knows where (as on the fourth track). The title refers to the unexpected nature of his music, where things happen by chance, by accident even. The result is mesmerising. Listen closely and you will be amazed that all these sounds are the results of percussive instruments, but even that no longer matters. The sound stands on its own, regardless of the instruments used. It's almost become ambient, the sounds of life, nature and civilisation, both equally unpredictable, captured in little sonic capsules with a high level of abstraction that is paradoxically also very physical.
Norwegian percussionist Emil Karlsen is based in Leeds at the moment, and becoming part of the avant-garde music scene. As far as I could find out, this is the third album on which he performs, and the choice to produce a solo CD is quite unusual. The album consists of twelve relative short pieces, on which he demonstrates the versatility and variety of his musical vision. The pieces are called "Waves", "Changes", "Air", "Flow", "Rain", indicating that the music is either evocative or inspired by nature. "Air" for instance, offers a spacious soundscape of individual cymbal sounds that resonate through silence, occassionally alternated with a slight beat on a tom. "Flow" starts quietly, but gradually gathers intensity and density, with many percussive sounds adding power like a mountain river that swells with the falling rain.
His music is crisp and crystal clear.
Eric Thielemans - Bata Baba Loka (Oorwerk, 2018)
Eric Thielemans is a Belgian drummer and percussionist, whose new release "Bata Baba Loka" is already his sixth solo album. His instrument is the drum kit. His approach is exploratory but with a strong emphasis on rhythmic changes and patterns, deeply rooted in jazz and African polyrhythms, but making them branch in various new directions. It's a treat.
Eric Thielemans & Billy Hart - Talking About The Weather (Oorwerk, 2019)
And this one is even a better treat: Eric Thielemans invites his former teacher and master drummer Billy Hart for an unusual album, a collage of real conversations - about the weather to start with - and drumming, and often unusual drumming at that. It's a meeting of approaches, of inventive interaction, with different set-ups of the percussion instruments. Thielemans, no longer the student, and Hart, no longer the teacher, go for it, creative, subtle, determined, powerful, supple, not there to impress, but to enjoy the moment, to enjoy each other's technique and ideas and then to merge and co-create with a like-minded spirit, a rare moment for percussionists. You hear them smile to each other during the performance. You hear the respect and the appreciation and the admiration. Some pieces are minimal, some exuberant, but always rich.
The album comes with a 64-page booklet with all the conversations in full.
Jay Rosen & Brian Willson - The Mystery Brothers (Not Two, 2019)
Jay Rosen (Trio X, Cosmosomatics, ...) and Brian Willson (Ivo Perelman Trio, Pauline Oliveros, ...) have an equally intimate conversation between drum kits on this album. The wonderful recording puts each musician on one audio channel (Willson on the left, Rosen on the right), so you can hear how the interaction develops, often seemingly playing as one in these four lengthy improvisations.
For two artists who know their instruments so well, and who are so competent and skilled, the fact of having this opportunity to speak the same language appears to be infectious. They are not all over the place, quite to the contrary: the music is focused, and even if unplanned, it develops with its own logic and sense of direction, like stories unfolding. The long last track is called "Unity". And that's what you get.
Eventless Plot - Percussion Works (Dinzu Artefacts, 2019)
Eventless Plot is an ensemble a little bit in its own universe. Their approach is minimalistic, with at least one or a few sustained tones that give the music a strong horizontal linearity, acting as a shifting foundation for the percussion to emphasise, contrast and disrupt. The trio, consisting of Vasilis Liolios, Yiannis Tsirikoglou and Aris Giatas, limit themselves to percussion on this album, in contrast to the use of piano and guitar on their earlier work. They are joined by Louis Portal for additional percussion. On the second track, Stefanos Papadimitriou joins with his viola, emphasising the sustained tones of bells. Evelina Krasaki sings - wordless - on the third composition. The main instruments are percussion, crotales, sound plates, singing bowls, cymbals, objects with the support of electromagnetic mics, contact mics, bows, sine tones, electronics Max/MSP.
Despite this line-up, the composed work is slow-paced, light-textured and ethereal. The collective effort of the musicians results in a sonic world of strange intensity. Despite its apparant calm, the music is rich and full of dramatic moments, and often of an eery beauty. Of all the albums reviewed in this list, it's possibly the least 'percussive' in the traditional sense, but at the same time it again reveals that with ingenuity and musical vision more can be done with less.
Last year, Japanese master drummer Tatsuya Nakatani released already his ninth solo percussion album. Nakatani is known to us for his collaborations with amongst others Peter Kowald, Gary Hassay, Asif Tsahar, Michel Doneda.
His approach to his instrument is a very physical one, highly energetic, even when he is using extended techniques as can be seen on the video below. On several of his previous solo albums he collected a number of different pieces, recorded at various intervals, but the approach on this album is different, as it consists of one long track of 45 minutes. And this approach works. Nakatani creates his sound art which requires time to develop, to build a sonic narrative that is full of intensity and an inherent level of violence and power.
Claire Rousay - various solo albums
To finish this list, I would like to refer to two albums already reviewed by Keith Prosk last month, but still worth mentioning in this series.
In conclusion, it's amazing that percussion only albums are proliferating. The musicians listed above have taken this unique form to a higher level, demonstrating that even in a very limited setting, many new sounds can be explored and created. I'm sure there will be something for anyone's taste.
Percussionist Claire Rousay had a prolific, style-defining 2018, releasing
or contributing to ten recordings, culminating in the personal, distinctive
solo Neuter. Rousay continues to grow and thrive in the solo
setting this year, releasing four so far, two of which are covered here.
Several Erasures (Already Dead Tapes, 2019) ****
Several Erasures
is a solo percussion soundscape lasting 37 minutes across four tracks that
furthers the direction of Neuter. The hiss of recorded silence
ensconces a ball bearing rolling in a mortar like a cat toy, woody clicks
reminiscent of Hayao Miyazaki’s depiction of kodama, persistent jingle
bells recalling Julius Eastman’s compositions, resonant meditative chimes,
bowed metal, crumpling, something rocking on the drumhead, something like
the strike of a grandfather clock, skinwork that sounds like circling the
drain, scratching, flaying. Most of the action is not perpendicular to the
drumhead. When it is, hi hat and kick drum accompany snare strikes in a
rising, syncronised pulse. Rousay is a master of the kit’s palette.
But what’s most striking is the mastery of space and time. Rousay often
allows sounds to decay into the silence. When soundings do occur together,
they often appear distinct, and any rhythm they result in feels natural and
fortuitous. The effect makes Several Erasures seem less like
intended music and more like a field recording of a child at play. Not a
child in the sense of immaturity, but rather unbounded by convention. It
reminded me of the freeing and framing silence of Polly Bradfield’s Solo Violin Improvisations, though this is much less silent.
It’s incredibly refreshing for a percussionist to not be a percussionist.
And to also not try to fill silence. Rousay is the percussionist to watch.
Several Erasures
is available digitally and on cassette.
It Is Just So Much More Difficult
(Falt, 2019) is another solo recording in a similar vein to Several Erasures. More traditionally percussive, though with more
exaggerated silences, and features an interval of ringing bells, chimes,
and cymbals that feels like some transcendent gamelan.
Aerophobia (Astral Spirits, 2019) ***½
6 tracks divide 35 minutes of solo percussion recorded in 2017 on Aerophobia. The earlier recording date makes Aerophobia
feel like a time capsule, due to Rousay’s rapid development, and the style
present here is much more akin to last year’s Divide than Several Erasures or Neuter. Most tracks contain textural
moments - mostly fluting cymbals or the drumhead - but the meat of each
track is nearly always cool, fast tricks building in tempo, volume, and
density into multi-limbed polyrhythms of perpendicular hits. It recalls the
physical, yet colorful, onslaughts of Chris Corsano or Tatsuya Nakatani.
It’s a treat to listen to, and there are moments where I thought “I didn’t
know the human body could do that,” but this doesn’t appear to be the
direction Rousay is moving towards.
Aerophobia
is available digitally and on cassette.
Rousay has also self-released the two tape collages of a moment in st louis and a moment at the beach and appeared on the
compilations Infinite Futures (Full Spectrum) and Free Percussion (tsss tapes) this year, sharing the roster with
Tim Daisy, Will Guthrie, et al. on the latter.
2018 really was a year for solo percussions albums. Stef presented an
extensive
twelve-album-overview
on Christmas, Eric reviewed Chad Taylor’s extraordinary
Myths and Morals
and Lucas Niggli’s
Alchemia Garden
. However, there was another important release in 2018 and there’s already
another one in 2019, both representing two very different approaches.
Rudi Fischerlehner’s first solo album is a solo drum album in the true
sense of the word. It’s just the man and his kit. In general,
Fischerlehner’s music covers avant-garde, improv and advanced post-rock,
he’s able to improvise freely and to use preconceived ideas. Projects like
his duo
Xenofox
,
Willing Suspension of Disbelief
(his collaboration with Frank Paul Schubert), and
Gorilla Mask
prove that he’s one of the most interesting drummers in the German-speaking
area at the moment (he’s from Austria). Asked about his musical development
to date, Fischerlehner says that at its core there’s hardly “a concrete
style, but rather a certain sound aesthetic. Above all, it’s a certain way
of finding one's own role in various projects and contexts. Ears open, hear
the whole thing, listening to each other“. Fischerlehner considers playing
solo as a big challenge, for him the music is differently coloured compared
to playing with others, it’s more extreme. What is more, he’s always been a
big fan of solo percussion, his interests range from Iannis Xenakis to
Milford Graves to Terry Bozzio. On 15 8 Slum he excluded the use
of mallets, because he thought that the focus on what timbre and rhythm can
express might be interesting.
The album title refers to a note about a rhythm in 15/8 lying side by side
with German dramatist René Pollesch´s book “www-slums“ next to
Fischerlehner’s drum kit. On 15 8 Slums the drummer’s music is
full of harsh contrasts: complex polyrhythmic, dark constructions on the
one hand (like in “Stasia“), sound colours completely freed from time on
the other hand, e.g. in “Semta“. The eponymous word of this track comes
from a science fiction novel by German writer Dietmar Dath and means
something like “pure possibility“ in the language of a completely different
people (compared to people on earth). Fischerlehner compares this idea to
Rashied Ali’s "multidirectional playing“, it’s like offering something that
can be heard in different ways, a statement that opens up possibilities.
And the track offers different directions indeed, as if there were two
drummers at work. Cymbals and bass drum seem to drift apart, a very
abstract “groove“ on the hi-hat tries to hold the piece together.
However, my favourite track is “Ghost“, a piece which suddenly mutates from
a hypnotic jungle beat which is mercilessly propelled by dark rhythms on
the toms and the bass drum to a hailstorm with whip-like blows on snare and
cymbals.
15 8 Slum
is a journey into sound. Highly enjoyable. Not only for drummers.
Eli Keszler is one of the percussionists who have released solo albums from
the very beginning of their career. Untitled and Tilt
(both on R.E.L. records; 2006 and 2009) follow very different approaches.
While Tilt concentrates on pure, acoustic percussion, Untitled also includes electric piano and guitars played by him.
On his last two albums, Last Signs of Speed and Stadium,
Keszler follows the philosophy of adding different instruments like Farfisa
organ, mellotron and piano (among other stuff) to his drum set in order to
find out what an album which is filed under solo drumming can be and how it
should sound. For Last Signs of Speed he put together a whole
collection of sounds - hits, taps, scratches, rattles, creaks, clinks,
thuds - created by his drum kit and the result sounded like a weird mixture
of electronic music, drum’n’bass and ambient. Purists however, would
rightfully claim that this has neither to do with jazz nor with a real solo
drummer album. Stadium continues the tradition of its predecessor,
it’s an album that rather reminds me of the instrumental parts of Flying
Lotus’s Until the Quiet Comes, especially the opening track
“Measurement Doesn’t Change the System At All”, in which a cool breakbeat
meets spherical soundscapes. Tracks like this contrast bumpier ones like
“Lotus Awnings“ and “Flying for U.S. Airways“, which are more abstract and
display complex shifts in structure and instrumentation. Especially the
subtle hidden sounds in the background, the glockenspiel in the latter and
the mellotron in the first, add a certain liveliness and tension to the
pieces. The album’s biggest quality is its relaxed, yet dark nature and how
all the tiny sound make up a greater whole. Especially the last track,
“Bell Underpinnings”, in which vibraphones dance over a dark electronic
bass beat, is spooky and beautiful at the same time.
Stadium
is available on vinyl, CD and as a download.
