American, Brooklyn-based drummer-composer-educator Andrew Drury recording output is quite scarce compared to his highly inventive and innovative powers. He studied with the legendary drummer Ed Blackwell, played and recorded with forward-thinking improvisers as Wadada Leo Smith, John Tchicai, Myra Melford and Mark Dresser, taught percussion workshops in prisons, Indian reservations and schools and just now founded a new label, named after his home studio-performance hall. His two new albums feature him as a great, versatile bandleader and experimental, resourceful musician.
«The Drum» is a mind opening solo floor-tom album that takes full advantage of Drury extended techniques, There is only one drum, no sticks, brushes, strikes on the drum, electronics manipulations or overdubs, just a floor tom and Drury applies, bamboo skewer, bell, faucet escutcheon, aluminium sheet, bass bow, voice and breath to its skin and frame. But that is enough for Drury. He is a mad scientist who celebrates the magic of the drum, turning it into a wind machine, playing with its different tunings, pressing its skin or blowing air into it. He creates intriguing textures, disturbing noises and colors with an impressive command and focus. This album presents Drury as a free spirit, adventurous, experimental sonic researcher, a kind of a futuristic shaman.
«Content Provider» is a quartet featuring sax players Ingrid Laubrock and Briggan Krauss, guitar shredder Brandon Seabrook and Drury on a more conventional drum-set. Here drury uses the drums for setting labyrinthine, tricky odd-metered rhythms, irreverent of any conventional compositional narratives. This ass-kicking, wild approach is best realized on the closing piece «The Band is a Drum Set». His like-minded partners enjoy this spirit of chaotic, free flowing and propulsive rhythms that borrow from modern and free jazz and fusion. The quartet spectrum encompasses Middle-Eastern polyrhythms and sax chants on «Ancestors Friends Heroes» and a soulful re-imagining of Clifford Brown’s bop classic «Daahoud» as a burning blues.
Eyal Hareuveni
Andrew Drury (dr), Briggan Krauss (as), Ingrid Laubrock (ts), Brandon Seabrook (g)
