Laurence Pike is an Australian drummer who has appeared in a variety of settings over the past 20 years – making ambient jazz with Triosk; working with his brother Richard in the jerky math rock outfit Pivot; duetting with the one-time ECM pianist Mike Nock; and exploring tantric music with electronic artist Luke Abbott and Portico Quartet saxophonist Jack Wyllie in Szun Waves.
His debut solo album, however, sounds very little like any of those lineups. It’s basically minimalism – drones, pulses, hypnotic arpeggios that alter very gradually – but with drums rumbling over the top. Drum kits are rarely invited into the pristine world of minimalism, a world of clean spaces and right angles. The only percussion you’re likely to hear in the music of, say, Steve Reich or Philip Glass will be the minty-fresh plonk of a vibraphone or marimba. Throughout Distant Early Warning, however, Pike’s drums grind, flutter and growl, adding several pleasing layers of scuffed texture to the smooth surfaces.
Much of it sounds as if it was painstakingly arranged, but Pike recorded it all in a single day, often playing entirely live. He triggers samples (frequently sampling himself, in real time) while playing his kit, a methodology similar to that employed by Four Tet’s Kieran Hebden in his duets with drummer Steve Reid, and tracks like Cyber Bully – a mix of tight syncopated drum solos and programmed beats – certainly recall those Hebden/Reid collaborations. On the opening track, Life Hacks, glistening broken chords spray out from synths while Pike plays fluttering textures on the tom-toms. On the title track, electronic effects whirr and click and low-pitched synth sounds throb ominously, while Pike’s cymbals provide a running commentary. It sounds tremendous at top volume.
Also out this month
Norway’s Slagr feature a Nordic hardanger fiddler, a cellist and a third player who doubles up on vibraphone and the lovely, wheezing sound of a glass harmonica. DIRR mixes heart-rending folk melodies with glassy, slow-burning, Steve Reich-style repetition. For more adventures in minimalism, check out Earth Loop, the debut album by William Young’s Moon Gangs: it sounds like a series of bombastic Bach fugues played by Jean-Michel Jarre on unstable analogue synths and 8-bit computer game soundcards. Finally the fourth album by Kansas City-born, Belgium-based Christina Vantzou, No 4, barely qualifies as music but works as an appealing series of discrete, drone-laden sound sculptures. One track is a glistening riot of tuned percussion; one is a slo-mo ambient epic; another features groaning strings that sound like a dying aircraft.
