Ramon Lopez

Etienne Nillesen
en
SOFA 603

Håkon Berre
Mirror Matter
Barefoot Records BFREC 086 CD

Drum solos have always been the boon and bane of Jazz and especially popular music, pointless displays of muscular endurance for some, cultivated impact and intonation for a few. The growth of free form improvisation over the past few decades have redefined this paradigm however. Percussion expression has evolved from drum solos to entire recitals where the other qualities induced by the touch on woods, metals and skin, sometime expanded with add-ons becomes the goal. As tone resonators, the soloists scrape, slide and echo more often than they belt and chop and these three European musicians demonstrate similar sophisticated skills in distinct manners.

Committed to the simplest set up on en, Etienne Nillesen from the Netherlands, extracts specific sonority using only an extended snare drum. On his single 32-minute excursion he begins with barely there pressure gradually working his way up to doubled and tripled strident vibrations that seem to answer themselves as they’re sounded. Maintaining an almost unending continuum, his ratcheting, which result from scouring cymbal edges as well sticks and brushes on the drum top become both more discordant as knife-like stabs meet distant almost melodic warbles so that both reverberate in tandem. Climax arrives in the penultimate minutes as a buzzsaw drone subsumes other sounds for an timbral ending that is as aggressive as it is speedy.

Expanding a percussion collection to a standard kit plus some add-ons, Spaniard Ramon Lopez celebrates his four decade residency in the French capital with 40 Springs in Paris. Over the course of 10 tracks he uses bell tree strokes, triangle pops and cymbal hammering as accents while roaming over the drum kit, marrying pops, shuffles and paradiddles in such a way that carefully positioned strokes and unexpected aggressive walloping add a cornucopia of rhythms to his percussion architecture. These rhythm excursions can on a track like “Alphabet of Roots” move from adding doumbek-like hand slaps and echoing wood strokes to fasten on swift drum beats and hi-hat accents. Taking advantage of a set-up that’s by definition larger than Nillesen’s single snare, he also doesn’t neglect sweeping brushes on snares and toms plus weighty bass drum smacks for additional power.

“The Sun that Awakens the Mountains” and “Climbing” give him the space to express rhythmic echoes, basement level reverberations thumps and speedy pattern shifts in the greatest detail. Stopping and starting variations at wrap speed during the firs piece, he’s becomes so involved that he grunts alongside adds rumbling stomps and backhanded clips to coordinate and add strength and color to the regularized beats. Meanwhile “Climbing” features the most extensive drum set variations. Kettle-drum-like bumps intersect with cymbal hammering as both reverberations create rhythmic antiphony until gong like vibrations signal the climax.

Expanding the number of idiophones even further than Lopez, Norwegian Håkon Berre uses drums, percussion, objects and electronics to beat out novel cadences on Mirror Matter’s 13 tracks. While on his own he can project enough tough beats to seemingly replica old time drum battles on his own, cannily adding programmed gurgles and patterns, plus the kind of strident scrapes Nillesen based his improvisations around, results in a program with timbres as surprising as they are superior.

Defining himself from “Meson”, the first track, his output is louder, tougher and more strident than that of the other percussionists. At the same time the swelling oscillations from game boy-like audio, ersatz ping-pong repercussions, tap dance-like shuffles, and wood or plastic sourced slaps make it clear that straight-ahead beats won’t be emphasized.

Considering that objects and electronics give him the ability to replicate such unexpected interjections as rough vinyl-like screams, alarm clock-like ringing, watery burbles and programmed wiggles, he also matches those textures to acoustic drum beats. The extended “Hadron” for instance joins jagged cymbal scratches with drum top swipes which are then intercut with electronic whizzes. Eventually a crescendo of scratches and pulls are superseded by a conveyer-belt-like collection of identical pops only to finally relax into ringing bell-tree shakes.

In contrast tracks like “Lepton” and “Tau” are unforced, with the former dependent on airy programmed twitters that sound like outer space signals intersect with bird-like squeals and idiophone rattles. “Tau” piles xylophone-like pings on top of hard percussion smashes, ending with burbling flatulent echoes.

Other acoustic and electronic timbres are synchronized to expose and utilize everything from Big Ben-like tolling and door-bell-like ringing with gong echoes and woody idiophone rattles, Berre also offers a track like “Graviton” to prove his percussion stridency can match those of any Metal percussion banger. Ruffing and rolling rugged rasps against unyielding surfaces, he ends up with ear-splitting metallic shills that almost replicate human screams. Not only are his strokes as forceful as freight train rumbles, but the programming add the sounds of synthesized timbral pressure that could launch a rocket.

Solo drum showcases can really be defined as percussion discussion. Yet so many timbres are advanced by the three examples here that almost as many rhythms as could be expected from multiple idiophones are featured on each disc.

–Ken Waxman

Track Listing: en: 1. en

Personnel: en: Etienne Nillesen (extended snare drum)

Track Listing: 40: 1. The Sound of Heart and Medals 2. The Son and Grandson 3. Three Bags 4. The Invisible Hands 5. Alphabet of Roots 6. The Sun that Awakens the Mountains 7. The Moon and the Nightingale 8. Climbing 9. Mirages and Wonders 10. Sixty-five Tolbiac Street

Personnel: 40: Ramon Lopez (drums and percussion)

Track Listing: Mirror: Meson

Personnel: Mirror: 1. Meson 2. Kaon 3. Boson 4. Fermion 5. Lepton 6. Tau 7. Muon 8. Hadron 9. Gluon 10. Hyperon 11. Baryon 12. Graviton 13. Pion

Håkon Berre (drums, percussion, objects, electronics)