Album/Song Reviews
Modern Drummer is the world’s most widely read drum magazine, is dedicated entirely to the art of drumming and caters to the needs of amateur, semi-pro, and professional drummers.
IZZ Crush of Night
CD It always seems unfair when progressive-rock haters toss out the word pretentious as a catchall way to denounce the genre. Fact is, prog only works when the listener is utterly convinced of the sincerity of the players’ devotion…
Utsi Zimring Zone 23
CD/ALBUM This moody and organic acoustic/electric jazz collection from drummer/composer Utsi Zimring features an all-star line-up of NYC jazz greats including guitarist Mike Stern, pianist David Kikoski, and saxophonist Bob Franceschini. Zimring dances playfully around the melodies with a…
Billy Cobham Colin Towns HR Big Band Meeting of the Spirits
CD/ALBUM Seventy-four-plus minutes of live bliss, as Billy Cobham reprises his role powering the music of John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra, this time with the marvelous Hessische Rundfunk Big Band. Arranger Colin Towns translates the fusion icon’s music in wonderfully creative…
Symphony X Iconoclast
CD/ALBUM The working man’s prog band? The thinking man’s metal band? However you want to label them, Symphony X occupy a pretty interesting corner of heavy music, and their new album, Iconoclast, is as good a place to discover their…
Eric Harland Voyager: Live By Night
CD/ALBUM Is this really Eric Harland’s first album as a leader? Recorded live in 2008 in Paris and featuring a stellar band including pianist Taylor Eigsti, the engaging post bop of Voyager: Live By Night is full of the drummer’s…
Jeff Coffin and Jeff Sipe Duet
CD Presented as a “single, stream-of-consciousness listening experience,” Duet finds Flecktones/Dave Matthews Band saxophonist Jeff Coffin and Aquarium Rescue Unit drummer Jeff Sipe engaging in a beautifully textured, free-form session using horns, drums, mallets, bells, gongs—anything and everything. Sipe’s…
Dream Theater A Dramatic Turn of Events
CD This highly anticipated Dream Theater recording with new drummer MIKE MANGINI finds the prog-metal veterans in a sonically refined and musically focused state of mind. Lyrically and compositionally, the band maintains its long-running status as innovative explorers, though…
Ringo Starr Ringo 2012
There’s something timeless about Ringo’s drumming. Though he’s not one to get with “the click-track way” of making records, you simply can’t ignore his flawless time and backbeat, and he always makes the simplest drum parts feel so good. Ringo…
Jimi Hendrix: New CDs and DVDs
The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Winterland (4 CDs) Jimi Hendrix: Hendrix in the West (CD) Jimi Hendrix: The Dick Cavett Show (DVD) Jimi Hendrix: Blue Wild Angel: Live at the Isle of Wight (DVD) It was Jimi Hendrix’s overriding artistic…
Dave Douglas & So Percussion Bad Mango
CD As part of the broader Greenleaf Portable Series featuring trumpeter Dave Douglas leading groups with drummers Marcus Gilmore and Nasheet Waits, Vol. 3 highlights So Percussion, bringing Douglas’s horn together with various percussion instruments for a wild concoction…
The Jelly Jam Shall We Descend
CD There are lots of reasons that Rod Morgenstein has survived the winds of rock ’n’ roll change for nearly three and half decades. One of the biggest is that he inherently knows when to hold back and when…
Miles Davis QuintetLIVE in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series VOL.1
CD/DVDs For Tony lovers (and who isn’t one?) here’s nonstop bliss. This superb set of three CDs plus one DVD captures five concerts from a 1967 European tour. The lineup of Miles Davis (trumpet), Herbie Hancock (piano), Wayne Shorter…
Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream and Gish 2011 Deluxe Editions
CD/DVDs Smashing Pumpkins’ first two records have been reissued with a remastered album proper, a bonus disc of outtakes and rarities, and an era-specific live concert DVD. From the opening tom pattern of “I Am One” (from 1991’s Gish),…
Dan Weiss Jhaptal Dumset Solo
CD Named by the New York Times in 2009 as one of the “Five Drummers Whose Time Is Now,” Dan Weiss has kept that promise as a busy jazz sideman. His intriguing concepts, deeply influenced by Indian music, culminated in…
