Olivier Travers

The full drumset is not really a central instrument in Latin music (as opposed to a bunch of percussion instruments), nonetheless many Latin grooves are playable on a drumkit, especially if you add a couple cowbells and woodblocks. Since I play on electronic drums, I can just add whatever sample I want on any of [...]

Walls is one of those albums showing that two decades in, electronic music still has legs. There’s really good stuff coming from Germany these days. I haven’t been in Berlin since about 18 months after the fall of the wall (crap, I can’t remember for sure whether I went there in the summer of ’90 [...]

The key with digital music gear porn is to only wank to it and resist buying stuff you’re likely to play with for 30 minutes then forget in a closet. Still, here’s some fun stuff: Zendrum (grand father of them all) Mandala Pankat (I own an old DK10 from the same vendor) Handsonic Trigger Finger [...]

Pitchfork’s review of Burial’s Untrue is mostly on point, though it’s funny to see a music reviewer struggle (or at least only intuit around) with well-known concepts such what a half-time beat is. If you play half-time on the drums, then by definition your accented snare or rimshot will fall on the third beat. That, [...]

As hardware improved those last three years, live triggering of PC-based soft samplers has become a reality for edrums players. I’ve been having fun for a while with my Roland TD8 triggering Toontrack DFHS and EZDrummer, but I have to say that the brand new BFD 2 looks very attractive with what looks like strong [...]

10 years on, the White Stripes rock on. Their latest album is an instant classic. Saying you’re enjoying rock albums is the self-inflicted Carbon 14 for music listeners, right? Well at least I know how to get them before the official release date, so people under 30 who read this, give me a bit of [...]

It’s been a while since I’ve been really enthusiastic about something I’ve listened to (admittedly for some reason I’ve been less aggressive at consuming new music these days), but Fly, a record released last year by an eponymous jazz trio, really did it for me. Jeff Ballard on drums charges on without overwhelming Larry Grenadier [...]

It’s been a while since I last posted pointers to music that got my attention, so here we go: Ruins – Stonehenge: harsh but entertaining prog rock from Japan. Roots Manuva – Run Come Save Me: excellent British hip hop. Carl Hancock Rux – Apothecary RX: I concur with the reference to Gil Scott-Heron; this [...]

The overwhelming commercialization of hip-hop shouldn’t hide the gems from sight, just like a famous Kenny G doesn’t mean jazz is dying. There’s value in popular mediocrity though: you can quickly tell whether someone knows anything about the genre they profess to love (my readers who praise Eminem will recognize themselves and silently shame themselves [...]

Gianluigi Trovesi’s Around Small Fairy Tales is an eerie fusion of 16th century Italian music and jazz. If you like both genres, you’ll fall under the spell of this sophisticated breeding, which despite the centuries, sounds uncontrived. When the best of Europe and America meet, the result is Western civilization at its best. Here’s hoping [...]