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.
Album Review: Dave Stryker’s Messin’ With Mister T
Marvelous guitarist Dave Stryker pays tribute to Stanley Turrentine, the late great tenor saxophonist who served up jazz with heaps of blues ’n’ soul. As a former decade-long “Mister T” sideman, Stryker’s an authority. Each of the ten tracks features…
Album Review: Ringo Starr Postcards From Paradise
The peace-and-love guru is back with his eighteenth studio release. Postcards From Paradise was produced by Ringo and recorded at his home studio in Los Angeles, and, as all his previous solo albums, features a little help from his friends…
Album Review: Nerve Live in Europe
Following a series of studio EPs that continued to expand and refine an electronic style executed by humans, Jojo Mayer and Nerve return with a much-anticipated album of performances captured during a 2014 European tour. The music is beautifully recorded,…
Album Review: Anton Times Two
A pair of recent recordings, Eric Johnson and Mike Stern’s Eclectic and Joe Bonamassa’s Different Shades of Blue, reveal what Late Show drummer Anton Fig is up to when he’s away from the TV cameras—namely, making some famous guitar slingers…
Dewa Budjana Surya Namaskar
Indonesian guitarist Dewa Budjana has released multiple albums as both a soloist and co-leader of pop band Gigi. On his latest release as a leader, Surya Namaskar, which is graced by bassist Jimmy Johnson and drummer Vinnie Colaiuta (Johnson and…
Enrico Pieranunzi Stories
Within the large production ethos of the Pat Metheny Group/Unity Group, it can sometimes be hard to discern the subtleties and exact stickings within Antonio Sanchez’s ever-refined skill set. Pianist Enrico Pieranunzi is also a master of subtlety, and his…
Don Grolnick The Complete London Concert
Released digitally via Peter Erskine’s Fuzzy Memory Music Archives, this 1995 live acoustic jazz set features pianist/composer Don Grolnick in peak form, accompanied by the unsurpassable lineup of Erskine, Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, Marty Ehrlich, Robin Eubanks, Peter Washington, and…
Jimmy CobbThe Original Mob Louis Hayes Return of the Jazz Communicators
Jimmy Cobb and Louis Hayes are undeniable architects of modern straight-ahead swing whose extensive discographies read like a jazz history lesson. Cobb cooks at a spry eighty-five, and youngster Hayes is hot at seventy-seven. Plain and simple, these gentlemen are…
Billy Joel A Matter of Trust: The Bridge to Russia
Essentially an expanded rerelease of Billy Joel’s 1987 live album, Концерт, the double-CD/Blu-ray/DVD package A Matter of Trust: The Bridge to Russia delivers unreleased audio and a more complete performance of the album’s companion concert film, Live in Leningrad. It…
Nels Cline Singers Macroscope
Genre-hopping has been Wilco guitarist Nels Cline’s method of operation across his solo efforts, and that sense of adventure surely permeates the proceedings on the fifth album by this trio, which also features bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Scott Amendola.…
KXM KXM
With the flood of so-called super-groups and pet projects out there, KXM is one of the few that holds water. The masterful musicianship is the undercurrent to the mature lyrical content and superbly crafted compositions. Fans of King’s X will,…
Brand X {Missing Period}
Not that anybody perusing a drumming website should need convincing at this point, but Phil Collins is one badass drummer. Those who first heard Collins during his mid-’80s reign over pop radio could be forgiven for being unaware of the…
The Peter Ulrich Collaboration The Painted Caravan
Peter Ulrich is concerned with the song first on The Painted Caravan (City Canyons/AIS), a grand mix of folk and world music, though each track boasts an interesting array of percussion, including djembe, Turkish cymbals, and temple blocks, which sets…
Mastodon Live at Brixton
On February 11, 2012, Mastodon played a sold-out show at London’s O2 Academy Brixton. It was the band’s largest headlining concert to date, with the nearly 5,000 in attendance privy to a metal event for the ages. Luckily, the group…
Billy Cobham Compass Point
With a backstory including a dangerous makeshift stage and a lottery-winning piano tuner who had quit a day earlier, this 1997 concert almost didn’t happen. And that would have been a great loss, since Billy Cobham and his superb band…
