Wilco on Austin City Limits. Full concert. This is so great.

Matt Johnson with St. Vincent. Notice the “womp” synth sound on the up beats that he triggers through the whole section of the tune. Really cool arranging between the live drums and the triggers.

If you haven’t listened to St. Vincent (lots of videos on that page), and you like A) creative pop music, or B) listening a total Bad-A guitar player blowing up the pop paradigm through deconstructionist arrangements, tones and textures all while holding up actual songwriting (i.e. the tune) supreme, then please give her a listen. She’s incredible. 

St. Vincent, stage name of Annie Clark, came through Columbus last night with a 4-piece. Herself on vocals and guitar (righteous guitar player), two synth players, and Matt Johnson (of Jeff Buckley’s Grace fame, among many others) KILLIN’ it on drums.

As you can see from the picture, Matt’s set up looked a bit nuts. Two kicks, a main snare, a side snare way to his right, another to his left. Triggers. Two sets of hi hats (one set on top of the other), and one lonely two crash-rides.

I traveled closer to his side of the stage (stage right, people, stage right) for a closer look, and his set up was actually really cool, especially when St. Vincent’s sonic landscapes are taken into account. In fact, I became more and more impressed as I realized what he was doing for the tunes throughout the show.

His “main” kit was a 24” kick, I think, and he had it tuned big, low and open, and it sounded so great. The other kick was smaller (22”? 20”?), and he had it tuned really dead and punchy. He played the “aux” kick with the left side of a double-pedal extension which was mounted right next to his “main” kick pedal. In other words, his right foot on the main kick pedal would move to the right a couple inches and be on the aux kick pedal, which lead over to the aux kick beater (a la Dave Weckl’s set up in the late 90s when he was doing two kicks). 

His main snare was tuned lower and open with a subtle ring to it, and the aux snare to his right was higher and tight. He had a 16” or 18” floor tom between the two kicks.

Basically, he had a wide-open kit on one side and a tight, punchy kit on the other. Same with the stacked hi-hats. One set was crisp, and the other was trashy sounding. And he often used his hi-hats as a crash. 

And everything was exquisitely tuned. Just awesome. And he played with finesse and lightness. Didn’t bash the guts out of the drums. Great touch.

I never saw what he was using for the trigger “brain,” but I presume it was a laptop based on the variety of sounds he was switching through from song-to-song and even section-to-section. Sometimes he was triggering a snare, sometimes electro hi-hats or big fake toms. Other times, he was triggering synths from St. Vincent records, or bleeps and bloops (I’ll post a video in a minute with that). It was VERY cool. 

And I didn’t even realize who he was until towards the end of the show. Great drummer. GREAT show. And probably every guy (and probably girl) in the place ended the night with a little bit of a crush on St. Vincent. 

Don’t settle for crap music, everyone. Keep it interesting. Keep it deep.

Japanese rockabilly gangs breakdancing to an awesome Peter, Bjorn and John tune? Yes, please.

I love Jack White more every day.

This is his all-male band called Los Buzzardos.

He also has an all-female band called The Peacocks. 

Can’t find this drummer’s name anywhere, but I’m diggin’ him. Anyone got a name? 

Update: Mr. Goold comes through, yet again. This is Daru Jones on drums. Link to Daru’s blog.

Loved her first record. Glad to be able to check this one out!

Spring cleaning.

This guy rules.

And that kick drum sounds killer.

That is all.

My friend Jared has started a great blog about his rediscovery of music. From his blog:

I haven’t seriously listened to music since 1995. Or maybe it was 1996—-whatever year was the year of Hootie and the Blowfish—-I stopped listening to music and it didn’t have a thing to do with Hootie. It’s like I just turned off the music. That’s it.

That is, up until about a year ago when some song came across my way that brought tears along with it and a realization that I’m missing out on something fundamental—-something more raw than the books and thinking and staring out the window are able to do.

About the same time as I stopped listening to music, it seems I also stopped writing. I stopped journaling. I stopped with the poetry.

Maybe they’re connected.

The link above is to a post I found very great, and you can read a response I gave in the comments as I began thinking through how different Jared’s inner life must feel than mine on a daily basis. (No good or bad distinctions—it’s just different. It’s super interesting to me!) 

Then stick around his blog to read the process. I’m so glad he’s being open enough to put this in a public forum, as well. This is just great!

A deceptively difficult groove to play. 

I’m playing drums for my friend MattiBurns tomorrow night here in Columbus.

I produced a couple tracks on his latest record, and one in particular (a clip of which is attached), was from a track MattiBurns brought in. He had a rough outline of a beat and a sample, and I started tweaking on it and added whatever here and there as I’m wont to do.

Anyway, I wasn’t intentionally jacking with anything specifically on the beat; I was just making it feel interesting with no real thought as to what was being manipulated. When dealing with sample-based music, the interactions between the various elements and samples are what can make it interesting and what can make it feel groovin’ and alive. 

On this particular track, I never played any live drums over top of it for the record cut, so I didn’t have to pay attention to the intricacies of what was happening in the drum part. Like I said, I was just making it feel interesting.

Well, come to find out, the drum loop is TOTALLY WHACK to actually play along with. If you listen to the cut—let’s say the tempo is 95bpm or whatever—the loop is actually cut up and tweaked in various places to be playing around 93 or 92bpm, but then it “speeds up” really quickly again at the top of each bar. It creates this interesting feel—like this cool lurching—in the track as it moves around that bass and organ sample, but, MAN, is it weird to play live drums to! I have to speed up my first four 1/8th notes on the hi-hat at the top of each bar, then slightly and continuously drag the rest of the bar, every bar. 

Anyway, try it. Play along with it for a few bars. Turns out it’s kind of cool. The tempo is constant, but the groove moves around in a relatively major way every bar. That’s interesting in-and-of-itself, and something worth examining at some point.

This is what I feel like on my practice-pad kit at home.

This guy’s a total pro, though: catastrophic equipment failure (rack tom at :21), but he plays on through while fixing it like nothing happened. He also pulls a Vinnie and puts a bar of 15 in there at one point. Not an unintentional dropped beat. No, no. It was a bar of 15.

And then two more catastrophic equipment failures, one of which launches the hihats into orbit, but he finishes strong. Color me impressed.

I need one of these.

And who is this Mark Guiliana? How have I never heard of these drummers?! I’m embarrassed. 

Excellent duo between him and Brad Mehldau. So great.

This is like Miles discovering a new & better form of heroin in his bad years. Wow. 

Don’t even know what to say. Holy crap. 

(More knowledge gleaned from the ever-assiduous Steve Goold.)