Pierre Favre DrumSight (INTAKT Records) Review
Antonio Sanchez’ acclaimed drum
score for last year’s Birdman movie has alerted a wider audience up
to how expressive all-percussion music can be. This album features a dozen
pieces composed by the 79-year-old Swiss percussion marvel Pierre Favre for his
DrumSights quartet. Favre made an ECM album called Singing Drums in 1984, and
he still leads groups that layer multiple rhythms with a warmth and vocal-toned
naturalness that hides their astonishing complexity. Brushes-dominated pieces
are ruthlessly badgered by bass-drum booms and woody tappings; deep fusions of
conga and tom-tom rhythms ring and chime with metallic upper sounds; rubbery,
racing-heart rhythms are pursued by thundering hooves; and there are byzantine
conversations on taxing meters like the 5-6-5-5 pattern of the brittle,
chattery Pow Wow. Every track has character, but the almost 10-minute Games
(originally written for the African djembe), a mix of soft and hard sounds,
martial, sensuous, relaxed or breakneck grooves, could be a sampler for the
whole remarkable venture.
