Portraits Brian Chippendale by Hank Shteamer Pretty might not be what he’s aiming for. But when Lightning Bolt’s drummer sits behind the kit, people move, and they think. What more could you ask for?When you think of a drummer playing dance beats, you might envision a session pro in the studio, synchronizing his or her limbs with a click track. But since the mid-’90s, one of America’s foremost body-moving percussionists, Brian Chippendale, has thrived in a far less sterile setting: jam-packed DIY shows in lofts and other unconventional spaces. As half of the Providence, Rhode Island, duo Lightning Bolt, Chippendale has perfected a new kind of dance-oriented drumming, one tailored to and informed by the conditions of the modern rock underground. Watch a clip of a Lightning Bolt show, and you’ll see a roomful of twentysomethings squashed together and throbbing like a single organism in time to thunderous noise-metal riffs […]

July 2013 Issue