House of Drumming.com

Pitchfork: Is that D'Angelo tour a real thing?

?: It's an extremely real thing. [Bassist] Pino Palladino just committed. My worst nightmare Chris Dave is his drummer-- you need the most dangerous drummer alive on that tour. I fear the magic those two are going to make.

Pitchfork: So that's happening next year?

?: He goes to Europe in January. The album is pretty much 97% done. He's just finishing his lyrics now. He needs somebody to smack him and take the record away from him because it's pretty much finished. But I know he must turn this record in like three days before Christmas and that his first show is in Europe, and that he's going to do a whole bunch. They even named it the Occupy Music Tour, so I know they're serious about it.

For all intents and purposes, this album is the black version of [The Beach Boys'] Smile-- at best, it will go down in the Smile/There's a Riot Goin' On/Miles Davis' On the Corner category. That's what I'm hoping for. There's stuff on there I was amazed at, like new music patches [keyboard sounds] I've never heard before. I'd ask him, "What kind of keyboard is that?" I thought it was some old vintage thing. But he builds his own patches.

One song we worked on called "Charade" has this trombone patch that he re-EQ'd and then put through an envelope filter and then added a vibraphone noise on top and made a whole new patch out of it. He's the only person I know that takes a Herbie Hancock approach, or Malcolm Cecil and Robert Margouleff-- the two musician/engineers who programmed all of Stevie Wonder's genius-period stuff-- approach. That's the last time I ever heard of somebody building patches. We'll see if history is kind to it.

Gaddabout wrote:

Manu wrote:

Gaddabout wrote:That totally reminded me of Lenny White with RTF, right down to the snare sound. Although Lenny was kinda sloppy sometimes -- on purpose I think, but every now and then it didn't quite sound like he landed whatever he was going for. Somehow it came together. Like this.

Yeah that's the thing, when I listen to this guy i feel confident he is in control and that WILL land where he wishes to

I would call what he does "metric deconstruction," because metric modulation doesn't quite explain it. He's not imposing a new meter over an old one. He's just ignoring it all together, but without losing '1' in his head. It's not always my favorite thing, I guess.