Artist: Ramon Lopez
Album: Drums Solo II – Swinging with Doors
Genre: Free Improvisation
Label: Leo Records
Released: 2007
Quality: FLAC (tracks+.cue)
Tracklist:
- Bismillah (Teppo’s home door 1) 2:19
- A Prayer in My Soul (Sauna door in Lemi 1 & kitchen door in U.K.) 5:44
- Monterrey (Iron door in Lemi) 4:10
- The Beauty of Life (Sauna Door in Lemi 2) 4:16
- The Godfather of Modern Drumming (Drums solo) 3:35
- Niños del agua (School door in Lieksa) 2:00
- Rihimäi Ballad (Station door in Rihimäki) 3:19
- The Moon Came to the Forge (Teppo’s home door 2) 5:44
- The King of Shuffle (Teppo’s home door 3) 3:50
- Tanguillos del clavel (Sauna door in Lemi 3) 3:09
- Krishna (Drums solo) 4:56
- Maldonado Street (Teppo’s home door 4) 4:20
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Lopez' new solo album, Drums Solo II: Swinging with Doors, shows the drummer in an entirely different scenario. To put it bluntly, he's improvising to a door. Well, many doors – kitchen doors, station doors, school doors, even sauna doors. The doors, played by Finnish bassist and composer Teppo Hauta-aho, produce long squeaks of varying pitch and tempo. Lopez reacts to the ambiance the doors create, hitting chimes, blowing horns, bowing a cymbal, rolling some curved, rubbery object against some stretched skin; the result is texturally extraordinary. Playful pattering offsets deep, rubbery, torturous tones. They elevate to a rumble before flowing into the hollow sounds of a hand drum on “The Beauty of Life”. The metallic, echoey shards created by cymbal hitting cymbal mingle with a quick, primitive patter on “The Godfather of Modern Drumming”.
Even without doors, Lopez solo merits a listen, but when that gargantuan rumble begins again, you sit up a little bit straighter. It's creepy, that constant, warbling when it slows sounds of a door in need of an oiling. Lopez' counter is downright cheerful in comparison. His method of focusing on a particular sound pattern before moving on results in the formation of a large collection of tiny characters. His narrative is vast and complex, but endearing and somehow, oddly familiar (Celeste Sunderland).