Today, percussionist and electronic producer Booker Stardrum announced his third album CRATER will release July 2 via NNA Tapes. Along with the announcement, Stardrum has shared “Diorama” — a texturally rich and rhythmically dense sound sculpture.
CRATER is the sum of countless dynamic, highly active, moving components. Not just percussive phrases, but melodies, textures, sound, noise, and the cracks and crevices of vacant space between these bodies. Stardrum’s creative approach is a multi-tiered process — ideas discovered during improvisation feed into live performances, which then fuel compositional concepts, cycling back and forth until the final arrangements emerge.
As with the majority of Stardrum’s works, percussion is the epicenter, the nucleus from which all else grows. But the music splinters off and transforms from there, growing and evolving into the distinctive final form that is Stardrum’s solo work. Melody plays a prominent role as well, but it’s journey feels dictated and influenced by the unpredictability and spontaneous, human fluidity of the percussive action.
Another important piece of Stardrum’s process is collaboration. Both inspiration and sounds were provided in varying capacities by Stardrum’s musical peers and close friends, whether they performed in-studio, or provided the artist with source material to then be sampled and processed into the structure of the tracks. The foundation of CRATER was recorded in-studio with long-time collaborative partner John Dieterich (Deerhoof), who also handled the final mixes and mastering. These recordings were then further dissected by Stardrum in a solitary headspace through digital editing processes, eventually revealing the nine individual pieces that make up the album.
A sustained tension carries the listener from track to track, which plays out like a narrative structure using a purely sonic language. The result is an overall sound that feels expansive and immersive, where the listener can truly feel held and embraced inside the music that Stardrum has created. Through deep listening, one can feel contained in this sound world, with enough dimensionality inside to move around freely and explore one’s surroundings.
Read the full bio and pre-order CRATER from NNA Tapes here.
Keep your mind open.
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[Thanks to NNA Tapes and Cody at Clandestine Label Services.]
