FLESH.WOOD.METAL

Flesh. Wood. Metal. This is a drum deconstructed, broken down to its physical elements and raw materials. Magali Babin and Herman Kolgen – contact microphones in hand – set out to explore each of the drum’s materials. Element by element, they explore the sounds a drum can make when it’s conventional utility is subverted. It is not what a drum can do that they focus on, but what a drum is when it is undone. Broken down, a drum is the cold steel of rims, bolts, chains, pedals, brushes, cymbals and bells; it’s the wood of shell and stick; it’s the skin of the drum and the body of the drummer as the flesh of musician and instrument are joined together in common purpose.

The interventions and intent of the drummer – or in this case the musicians who play with the drums – are essential. When we hear a drum being beaten, it is not only stick on skin creating a sound but also the reverberation of that action inside the shell: we hear the efforts of the drummer combined with the material of the instrument. Drums magnify the force of intent: there are repercussions to our actions. But behind and within the expected explosions of sound lurk faint rattles and hums, the sounds of flesh, wood and steel absorbing the impact of our intent. Babin and Kolgen don’t beat the drum or make it a slave to their rythm, they loving deconstruct it and explore the essential sound and nature of each unique element of the drum’s body. They test the tension, the friction and the resonance part by part. They rub, caress and determinedly scratch at the surfaces, listening for and capturing the sounds a drum can make other than those we know so well. Using these recordings of a drum’s raw materials and material sounds stripped of their usual context as their source material for further explorations, Magali Babin and Herman Kolgen playfully and gently reconstruct our expectations of what a drum is and can be.