CRATER

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Drummers have always been the natural audience for electronics in music. Dedicated to making all the sound live or in the studio that they could, those with more advanced ideas quickly groked that chips and processors could reproduce and manipulate all the shades and subtleties they could hear in their heads. A leading rhythmic presence in the NYC experimental recording collective, Cloud Becomes Your Hand, as well as a collaborator with Lee Ranaldo, Nels Cline and Weyes Blood, Stardrum is also a solo composer who has waded deeply into percussive texturalism via filters, effects, and all manner of unidentifiable electronics. Rarely using noise, white or otherwise, Stardrum's maturing works are dense, neverending explorations of sound. Although he says he's derived "inspiration and sounds" from a variety of "musical peers and close associates" Stardrum's Crater is mostly the result of a collaboration with John Dieterich of Deerhoof who also mixed and mastered the record. Stardrum himself was instrumental in digitally editing the pieces into nine distinct tracks. The resulting sonic universe, meticulously layered and chopped to listenable lengths is multi-hued and adventurous. Here in "Fury Passage," where the dynamics of the piece flow in a tightly controlled up and down, hill and dale motion, a liquid, burbling background rhythm of timbale-like tonality, churns underneath squeaking, growling and until finally a tense, quavering kinetic pattern emerges. "Bend" features a rapid-fire drum part, toms and metallic banging, to which ornamental clanging and a swirling circular tone is added. That breaks down into organ-like phrases over another steady rhythm, this time with more bass drum added. Crater's most fully accessible and structured composition is "Parking Lot" where a bass drum and a near dance rhythm of electronic bleeps form a throbbing melody. If there is such a thing as an electronic single, this is the model. That's followed by "Yellow Smoke" a storming hive of pulsing, unceasing sound waves eventually enlivened by repeated hollow drum strikes, various bells and rumbling background drumming. While it's esoteric and too amorphous to be actual pop music, Crater is also sneaky and accessible. These nuanced, unpredictable soundscapes, what the drummer has called "the regeneration of ideas," are about the journey, as it changes and gives voice to feelings and ideas traditional instruments and song structures cannot. © Robert Baird/Qobuz