The unique thing about this slab of sonix from 1999 is that I actually played the drums throughout the whole recording. There’s only one drum loop used, the rest is just me whacking my way through pieces in my own style. I’m not a drummer, no sirree. I have aspirations to play the drums, but environmental limitations have always prevented me from having my own proper kit.
Back in 1999, I invested some of my yearly musical budget spend on a Roland SPD20, which was a eight rubber squares for me to hit and allowed me to connect footpedals, etc. At that time, I was enamoured with the idea of having an electronic drumkit because I was listening to a lot of King Crimson (Hi Sid!) and very interested in what their drummer Pat Mastelotto was doing on drums. He was using exclusively an electronic kit and I really like the sound he was making. So this was my sad, pathetic attempt to commune with my heroes and so it came to pass I had an electronic drumkit, of sorts. But it needed to be mounted on a proper drum stand for me to get any use from it.
I went to a drum shop in Walthamstow where the propreitor, a very nice old man, was very helpful. Explaining my needs, he took me to the part of the shop which dealt with all the second-hand junk and looked like something the Jawas from the first proper Star Wars film might have inhabited.
He scrabbled around amongst the steel frames and connectors and looping, arching, abandoned drum stands that had seen their day and managed to pull out this really manky tubular frame. But on inspection, and despite its appearances being diminished by a layer of thick dust after years of abandonement, I realised this percussion frame was ideal for my needs. Asking the price, the man said without hesitation “£20” and the deal was struck. And so for a very reasonable amount of cash, I had my first and only drum frame on which to mount my SPD20, its pads and snaking entanglement of connecting leads.
My SPD20-based electronic “drum kit”
While it wasn’t a fully-featured virtual drum kit in the style of the V-Drums range that Roland produces, it filled a rhythmic need in me at that point. I also couldn’t afford to invest thousands of pounds on a proper set of electronic drums when my budget was more like £500. I had this kit for about five years before I sold it on. I appears here and there, mainly providing rhythmic accentuations – cymbal splashes, touches of ethnic percussion, and very rarely (like in this instance) full blown performances.
This “START” album was originally recorded around June 1999. It was a different time, I had a different set of responsibilities, I was still living in a flat in Leytonstone and working in a proper job in the industry they call media. It was meant to be experimental, different, forward-thinking, edgy. But at the time, the limitations of my playing and my music software shone through. None of the mistakes were edited, there were bits where the music software/soundcard stretched the sound so things were a little out of sync, and parts of it sounded as if it were recorded underwater because I knew bugger all about EQ settings in the music software I was using.
START
“START” is my equivalent to Mike Oldfield’s “Hergest Ridge”. It is the album that got left at the back of the cupboard and is unloved. Until now, that is. I’ve had some real fun revisiting the tracks and “putting things right”. Luckily, all the master tracks were available and complete, so nothing was missing.
Being true to the spirit of the original, I’ve not done too many edits and left as many of the fluffs in as I can. I’ve only tightened things up a bit where before they were slightly out of synch. But everything sounds better, and it almost sounds like a new recording. I am very pleased with it now and amazed by some of the ideas going on there.
With the tracks “6s and 7s” “At the Temple” and “Working Backwards”, the drums/percussion are played by me as live. This is why those tracks have a unique feel and sound quite different to anything else I’ve done. Only “Sort it Out” features pre-recorded loops created by a piece of software called MixMan.
In the instance of “Working Backwards” I remember sitting at the kit in the flat and banging around for about ten minutes with computer recording me. Then I reviewed what I played and edited down for size down to three minutes by lopping the beginning section off. The song was then constructed around this complete rhythm track by adding bass, synth and then the melodic details until the song as we know it emerged. It was like painting a sound picture, adding layers of colour and detail until the finished work emerged.
This 2010 edition sounds like a completely new album and is worth a listen purely for my laughable drumming. I’m presenting it here as one complete piece of music, but it is divided up into 12 separate tracks all linked together.
START
Featuring:
(i) Start
(ii) 6s and 7s
(iii) Sahara
(iv) A Cool Breeze
(v) At the Temple
(vi) Sort it Out
(vii) Fireside Dreaming
(viii) Starshine Falling
(ix) An Awkward Phase
(x) Acoustique
(xi) Reflections
(xii) Finish: Working Backwards
Due to the downloads and listens I was getting for this collection, I have made an official release of it so you can now purchase CDs and downloads.
CDBABY CD PURCHASE
ITUNES PURCHASE