Blow ‘Love Sweet Love’ out yr ass. What the world needs now is more solo drumming albums!
Pascal here is happy to oblige with Nihilist Chakai House; two sides of one-man drumming action that swings like a goofy magnetic pendulum.
History lesson: Pascal Nichols is a fully fledged ceramist, beard-wearer and drummist in ozone-scraping duo PART WILD HORSES MANE ON BOTH SIDES along with non-beard Kelly Jayne Jones. For this disc he’s all alone and riffling the pack to better feel the texture.
Nihilist Chakai House Side One: It’s crystal clear like an ECM joint yet huffed with a sweaty Javanese energy. The bronze pots get thunked bad and vibrate, shifting units of time, Bene Gesserit style. A massive station clock weeps small brass cogs until the stutter of fudge-footed mice scramble all smeary, dazzling with dry-snare. Between times you hear the most amazing sonorous cowbell work this side of a Trouble Funk block-jam tailing off into resinous wooden bumps.
Nihilist Chakai House Side Two: Opens up all hot, with frittering and hummingbird-quick trap work. Ed Blackwell loans Pascal his sticks (made from hollow heron’s legs) adding that extra venerable edge to the membranous drones and crisp celery crunch. At one point hard hands, rough as sandpaper, jigger and jolley moans out the drum skins creating a Tie-Fighter dogfight. This segues into a resonant metallic chitter; all chipped chrome and dangerous ricochet. Pascal chooses to close this beautiful record in a dignified manner…amplified wool being wound round a Djembe in freezing fog. The taut fibres crush the breath out the goblet bowl, the drum speaks!
File alongside those Chris Corsano bootleg CD-Rs, Eli Keszler’s Endgrove tape and Paul Hession’s Giant Soft Drum Set.