back Gallery Biography Toby Dammit Mavens of The Good Life unite! Toby Dammit is a master percussionist who has here made one of the most compelling albums in recent memory. Layered, melodic, insane music where Hal Blaine meets trance, where Martin Denny blends with Ennio Morricone, where symphonic percussion instruments are filtered through 1960's spy movie soundtrack sensibilities and rubbed up against Vampyros Lesbos. Is he the unfathomable link between Edgar Varese and Senor Coconut? Between Harry Partch and Harry The Bastard? Between the deep mysteries of Swedish sexcrime and psychedelic Krautrock sambas?! You have to feel the weight of his tympani storage facility to understand the glimmer of his glockenspiel. Currently a U.S. Resident, he travels the world in an ever-changing magical orchestra pit. His beats collide, and the children unanimously scream in the ecstasy. "Throughout the history of late twentieth-century popular music, the cries have been heard in song titles: 'Hear the Drummer Get Wicked', 'Give the Drummer Some', 'Bring that Beat Back'. Perhaps these are all responses to jazz drummer Max Roach's enigmatic question: does the beat lie in the drumbeats or between them? Musical provocateur Toby Dammit, whose work at the fringes of U.S. popular music, leaves unanswered that question. But in doing so, insists on the central role of percussion and drums, making a path-breaking record in the process. Drums and percussion are too often consigned to the background, as drum fills or a 4-4 kick drum installed to keep metronomic time. But there are few artists who bring percussion to the foreground, and Toby Dammit's music occupies that rare position of the artist who works solely with percussion to create extraordinarily complex yet deceptively simple tracks. -Tim Haslett back page top Gallery