Kevin Drumm
Avant-garde tabletop guitarist Kevin Drumm was born and raised in 1970 in South Holland, IL, playing in a handful of rock bands before relocating to Chicago in 1991 to work at the city's Board of Trade. He soon began his experiments with prepared guitar, applying objects including magnets, binder clips, chains, a violin bow and even toenail clippers to distort the instrument's sound; in time Drumm befriended a number of members of Chicago's growing improv community, including Jim O'Rourke, Gastr del Sol's Upgrade and Afterlife album and Ken Vandermark.
Avant-garde tabletop guitarist Kevin Drumm was born and raised in 1970 in South Holland, IL, playing in a handful of rock bands before relocating to Chicago in 1991 to work at the city's Board of Trade. He soon began his experiments with prepared guitar, applying objects including magnets, binder clips, chains, a violin bow and even toenail clippers to distort the instrument's sound; in time Drumm befriended a number of members of Chicago's growing improv community, including Jim O'Rourke, Gastr del Sol's Upgrade and Afterlife album and Ken Vandermark.
OG23
Ever unpredictable, Kevin Drumm this time takes the fellow time-traveller through what sounds like an electronic field recording, a journey through an electronic soundscape of luminescent textures that invites immersive listening.
Battering Rams
* Edition of 400 copies * From the viscerally punishing and nerve wrecking, to the wistfully sublime, Kevin Drumm ‘s work often yield a ferocious intensity through the timbres of minute details. Now, throughout this series of archival works dating from 2000 to 2022, his mastery is once again on full display.
On »Battering Rams«, sinister forces interlope with sanguine glimmers of respite and contemplation, while recurring drones ceaselessly crescendo to near paralysing effect, only for the album…
Inexplicable Hours
CD in a Digipak. Inexplicable Hours is the sequel of the successful Kevin Drumm 6CD box 'Elapsed Time' also released by Sonoris last year. The first record documents a new direction in his music, with some of his last electroacoustic experimentations with audio generators, field recordings and various electronic devices. The second one explores the same ambient/drone territories as the boxset, but less static and more complex than it appears after a superficial listening. And as always with rece…
The Last Minute or Later
**300 copies** "When plagued by problems deriving from people’s exiguous lucidity, tips for a resolution are warranted by a thorough immersion in unconventional sonic experiences: the necessary answers materialize prior to any question, the right moves are performed by our intuition without a word dictated. We listen to billions of hours of sounds across every range of the audible, and become capable of maneuvering the mind through their mysterious manifestations to escape from cerebral quicksan…
Interference
Edition of 100. Five sequentially numbered pieces of phantom electronics, preceded by an opener/overture that pulls you right in, appropriately entitled Intro. An aural investigation, down the rabbit hole. This is Kevin Drumm to the bone. Essential
Elapsed Time
A landmark! "Elapsed Time" is undoubtedly destined to be a classic, and one of the finest experimental tomes to emerge over the last years. Kevin Drumm array of releases have traversed the auditory spectrum, roaming from tension-ridden ambient and electro-acoustic suites through to massively distorted, dense and decimating guitar and synth compositions. But despite his noisy reputation, KD music can be overwhelmingly sensual even at its loudest, providing a form of minimalism replete with a de…
The Back Room
Kevin Drumm is a Chicago-based experimental artist and one of the most important musicians in the electroacoustic noise scene. During his career he has worked with great improvisers such as Mats Gustafsson, producer Jim O'Rourke and saxophonist Ken Vandermark. Kevin Drumm's Imperial Distortion (HOS 134LP) and Sheer Hellish Miasmah (EMEGO 053LP) are must-hear albums of contemporary avant-garde.The Back Room is a vinyl reissue of a previously self-released album. Two years ago, Drumm prepar…
Busman's holiday
This album is a meditation on the inner mental environments that one encounters and endures during times of work-related travel. The music contained herein should be well suited for headphone distraction in airports, bus stations, train stations, subway terminals, and in the confines of the seats related to these methods of mass transportation.Recorded, edited and mixed by Kevin Drumm and Jason Lescalleet in 2015.
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"Busman's Holiday opens with audio taken from an iconic scene in John Boorman's…
Like the dust under a mother's knife
Recorded live at ODUM - Chicago - February 24, 2007 by Todd Carter Drawings by Leif Elggren.
Active since the late 1970s, Leif Elggren has become one of the most constantly surprising conceptual artists to work in the combined worlds of audio and visual. A writer, visual artist, stage performer and composer, he has many albums to his credits, solo and with the Sons of God, on labels such as Ash International, Touch, Radium and his own Firework Edition.
Kevin Drumm is an experimental musician bas…
Wrong intersection
It can be hard to describe what distinguishes a really good noise record from an average one, but Drumm makes it easy for us. The question that all improvisers have to answer is whether something you play once can be worth listening to more than once. Experience and forethought ease the answer toward yes, and Drumm has both at his command.' Pitchfork'Kevin Drumm's outstanding Imperial Distortion is undoubtedly one of the finest experimental tomes to emerge over the last decade. It reframed the t…
Trouble
Trouble is the brand-new dispatch from the assorted output of Kevin Drumm and sits as one of the quietest in his entire catalog. A single continuous 54-minute excursion into the netherworld of the audio spectrum, Trouble is neither ambient nor drone, but a more complex investigation into the deep recesses of sound. One which discreetly works itself into the mind of a listener willing to invest in the path laid out in this extremely subtle, beautiful and exceptional release. Recorded in win…
The Abyss
The Abyss is an epic, dynamic statement that shows the wide range of sound these two esteemed artists are capable of creating. The lengthy list of instruments used, plus the year it took to assemble, gives an indication that there is a grander modus operandi at play here than the linear works that Kevin Drumm and Jason Lescalleet are known for. CD-1 is made up of seven pieces that run the gamut, with electronic crackle, digital shards of noise, piano mangle, and even dissonant brass clust…
Phantom jerk
Here's a newie from notorious noise terrorist Kevin Drumm. The press release just says Kevin Drumm: modular analogue synth, while the sleeve isn't much more forthcoming, telling me the artist, title, label name and another snippet of information: 6 oscillators, recorded July 2013.Compared to some of his brutally distorted sonic assaults, this is a surprisingly tranquil serene album, with slow-drifting synth drones rubbing sonorously against one another in a ghostly shimmer that's part Deathpro…
Shut In
'Shut In' is a "Beautiful piece of Easy Listening for Cabin Fever courtesy of Kevin Drumm" says Editions Mego, and who are we to argue? It yields some of the inimitable artist's most beautiful, oneiric sounds since his immense 'Imperial Distortion' album for Hospital Productions; in fact, we wouldn't be surprised if we were told it came from those same sessions. One singular piece unfolds for just over 30 minutes across two sides, slowly radiating a sort of soothing harmonic balm with an …
Humid Weather
Exceptional Polish imprint, Bocian Records presents a necessary vinyl edition of Kevin Drumm's super limited 2012 release for Hospital Productions, "Dedicated to my least favorite thing in the world, humidity." Over two sides breaking down to three pieces, Drumm expresses his irritation through a mixture of field recordings and microtonal drones made in july/august 2012 and transposed with intercepted voice recordings from summer 1995 at Mosquito Net Studio, Chicago, Il.
In 'Humid Weather' prope…
Imperial Distortion
**One of the most iconic ambient albums of the last decade, Kevin Drumm 'Imperial Distortion' had an extremely limited vinyl pressing a couple of years ago which some argued never quite captured the full depth and frequency range of the original material due to the way in which it was mastered. This brand new edition has long been planned by the label and has now been painstakingly remastered by Matt Colton, unveiling a filigree spectrum of microtonal flux and layers of atmosphere that were simp…
Purge
Kevin Drumm's 2007 cassette 'Purge' on iDEAL went out of stock in less than a week. This is the CD version of that killer thing. Intense listening taking you deep into the known unknown, or perhaps the unknown known. Drumm's noise is extremely powerful and dynamic.; travelling frequencies, rich with details, with very little hope, with guaranteed exhaustion after frequent listening. I always think about Black Metal when I am listening to Drumm's works,Ê they share the same cold and darkness. 'Pu…
Tannenbaum
Epic and desolate ambient drone from Kevin Drumm on his first release for Hospital Productions since the brobdingnagian 'Imperial Horizon'. Drumm's sutble work with moving, roving drones keep the pace and tempos moving at hitchcockian tension while details of a story emerage with swells and fades as other sequences are lost in the clatter of long chambers of isolation adorned with the trimming's of pagan beauties. In time for the holiday season and all that entails. Edition of 500.
Kitchen
Kevin Drumm is a musician not only known as a one-man-orchestra exploring the boundaries of music, but also a star under the banner of inestimable Bocian Records label. This time we were granted with access to his kitchen. The LP is limited to 34 minutes, consisting of 2 pieces, originally recorded in 1996 yet fully remastered in 2012. Side one piece slowly opens a kitchen door. Smooth, equilibrious and loopy sound fractions that surpass those requirements ambient music is bound to meet. F…