Category — Drum Recordings

After reading a story on Stereogum concerning Dave Grohl, (of Nirvana and Foo Fighters fame) writing Metallica an open later chastising them, (Dave Grohl’s open letter to Metallica), ironic isn’t it? I thought I’d check out their website and see what’s up.

Apparently, Metallica launched a website called www.missionmetallica.com, a place where drummer Lars says “people can kind of tune in every day, watch clips, contests, get updates for what’s going on with the record and kind of watch the last couple of months of song titles, album titles, final mixes.” The website also contained a trailer for the new album but the site was taken down, the trailer is still available on YouTube. I just hope Lars can lay down some drum tracks this time that don’t include his super pongy snare drum from St Anger.

The YouTube clips essentially show a few sound bytes/snippets of new songs being worked on and/or recorded in the studio. If you’ve ever seen the bands “Spinal-Tap-for-real” documentary “Some Kind of Monster” it kind of looks like that. Let us also hope Rick Rubin (the Michael Bay of music), succeeds in helping the band reclaim their early sound. I hate to be pessimistic, but I kinda doubt it.

Source.

Russian Circles new album “Station” contains a lot of elements you’d expect from the band, which is one of the reasons why its a good record.  The album starts off with the track “Campaign” which begins with a mathy riff set over an ambient droning guitar, and sounds almost too pretty for the band. The song increases its build with many layers of delayed, ambient guitars and eventually gives way to…well…another mathy riff, before Turncrantz cymbal and snare rim hits lead the band into a soft groove followed by a heavy tribal section.

The expectation is one of the best things about this album, just when you think a song is going to get loud and punishing it keeps you guessing and waiting. Turncrantz drumming helps the anticipation build a lot, everything that made the percussion on the first album great is displayed here again…solid grooves, fast fills, cymbal flourishes and heavy tribal tom beats.

I am really enjoying this album, I feel that the band has all evolved as players. The production on this album, once again is great, everything can be heard clearly, when the guitars kick in they are intense, the snare, bass drum and tom sounds are all crystal clear and the bass guitar is punchy as well. I think the band has managed to trump themselves, as I may like this one more than their first album “Enter”.

The new album from band Russian Circles, “Station” has been released. While I haven’t heard the album yet I’ve seen a few reviews, most notably from Pitchforkmedia.com. Pitchfork gave the album a 6.9 rating, whatever that means. They also gave the bands debut album “Enter” a 6.4 rating.

I usually tend to disagree with pitchforkmedia and the rating of Russian Circles “Enter” album, so this may mean I’ll end up liking the bands new album as well. I’m going to get a copy of the album as soon as I can, give it some listens and then post a review up here…

Russian Circles “Station” Review @Pitchfork.com

A musical project called Shrinebuilder, which was to feature Wino (of The Obsessed, Hidden Hand, Spirit Caravan), Scott Kelley (Neurosis) and Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius of OM will now include Dale Crover of the Melvins!

After Chris Hakius left OM it has now been confirmed that Dale Crover will take his place in the Shrinebuilder project. The project is slated for a 2009 release via Neurosis’ label, Neurot Recordings.

This is exciting news for me as a huge fan of Dale Crover’s drumming. I know that Wino, Scott Kelley and Al Cisneros will come up with amazing riffs, and now its pretty much confirmed that those riffs will be backed by some amazing drumming. This project is shaping up to be a very good one, I also hope to see the band live if they end up doing some dates.

More information.

Rashied Ali has been one of my favorite drummers for a while. He played with John Coltrane and comes from an avant-garde jazz background. His playing, (a lot of it at least), is very improvisatory and complicated. Not complicated in the sense where he is just spinning his wheels, but complicated in the sense of being extremely exploratory, daring and fluid.

A record I highly recommend checking out is “Duo Exchange”, released in 1973 on the Blue Note jazz record label, it stands as a powerful statement on avant-jazz, improvisational drumming. Its just Rashied Ali and a horn player; Frank Lowe, 2 tracks, around 20 minutes each. The music featured on this album may be hard to listen to for some, but the fruits of your listening are worth it as it shifts from intenese driving sections to slow, moody sections with oddly placed accents coming from Ali.

Ali is all over his kit on this album, with amazing tom tom sections being the highlight of the drum sound. Even if you aren’t into jazz or the somewhat abrasive sound of this record, if you’re into drumming there is a lot you can pick up here. When I first heard this record, there were so many drum tricks, fills and accents I’d never heard before. Great album and an amazing drummer.

It has been announced as of yesterday (the first I’ve heard at least), that 25-year-veteran alternative band The Melvins will be releasing a new record on July 8th, 2008. The new album is titled “Nude With Boots” and was recorded at West Beach Recorders in Los Angeles, CA and also once again features the duo Big Business as part of the Melvins lineup.

This album comes as the follow up to the bands last record “(A) Senile Animal” which was one of their most successful and well received records out of their entire catalog. Sorry to bum anyone out who has found this page, I DO NOT have the leaked album nor do I even know if it has leaked or when it will. All I know is what I’ve read, and that it WILL be released on July 8th, 2008 via independent label - Ipecac Records.

Anyone who got their last record, knows that since the Melvins and Big Business combined forces, they had double drums and will have double drumming featured on this new album as well. Dale Crover is one of the most impressive drummers currently out there in my opinion, really looking forward to this one…

*(Photo courtesy of www.themelvins.net)

This isn’t newsworthy or anything, but as I was driving in my car the other day, the Nirvana song “Heart-Shaped Box” came on the radio. I’ve heard this song probably more than a million times, as I’ve been listening to it since I was around 11 years old. Strangely though, everytime I hear it, it sounds even better. This is probably the mark of a truly great song, but probably also the mark of a great recording as well.

I am aware that this particular song was recorded by Steve Albini, (who’s also recorded The Pixies, Bush, various thousands of other artists) and mixed by Scott Litt (REM, Incubus). Steve Albini is of course well known for his drum sound, but I like the combination of that sound combined with Scott Litt’s mixing techniques. Yea, I don’t really care that its not “super raw” or whatever. It sounds good to me. Of course the drums wouldn’t sound that great at all if Dave Grohl weren’t playing them anyway.

Steve Albini though, is known to put mics all over the drum kit, as well as all over the room he’s recording the drums in. Some multi-tracks of the In Utero album did leak recently and they show that there were a ton of mic’s used on the drums. Some room mics were used just for the sound of the crash cymbals as well as the ride cymbal. I’d love to do this kind of recording myself, I just really don’t have the money for these kind of mics, or a specifically designed drum room to record in, but I might use this technique next time I record drums on my own.