A Chicago tabletop-guitar virtuoso who became a major noise figure: the maker of Sheer Hellish Miasma, working from overwhelming density to near-silence.
Kevin Drumm is the American experimental musician I keep at Tier II as one of the central noise figures of his generation. Based in Chicago, he came up through the city's renowned improv scene as a virtuoso of the prepared and tabletop guitar, playing in combos with Jim O'Rourke, Ken Vandermark and others, and it is that improviser's control, carried into electronics, that gives his harsh work its discipline.
His landmark is Sheer Hellish Miasma, released on the Mego label in 2002. Built from guitar, tape, microphones, pedals, analog synthesiser and subtle computer processing, it is a storming, overwhelming record of feedback and fractured texture, and it is widely regarded as one of the most uncompromising statements of the 2000s noise scene, a reference point that has only grown over the two decades since. It placed Drumm, already a decade into his playing, at the front rank of harsh electronics.
The noise is only half the picture. Drumm's catalogue runs from that density to long, near-silent drone and minimal pieces that sit at the threshold of hearing, and the through-line is dynamics: a command of the full range from the barely-audible to the physically loud. That breadth is what separates him from the wall-of-noise mainstream and ties him back to the listening discipline of his improv roots.
He is an extensive collaborator, networked internationally with figures who likewise play by their wits, Jim O'Rourke, Fennesz, Taku Sugimoto, Werner Dafeldecker and many more, and within this archive's world he has recorded with Daniel Menche on Gauntlet and played in John Wiese's Sissy Spacek. His work has been set beside Roland Kayn's machine compositions, Merzbow's saturated noise and O'Rourke's harshest records, a bridge between free improvisation, the Mego electronic axis and harsh noise proper.
I keep Kevin Drumm at Artists · Tier II as a major American noise and experimental artist, and as the maker of one of the genuine landmark records of contemporary harsh electronics.
VAGO · c. the Anthropocene