Ah, group drumming! Having spent a large portion of my life residing in punk houses, I've taken part in plenty of these sweaty, multi-person freakouts. We tried our damnedest not to call them drum circles, but the logistics couldn't lie: five crusts with more than five sticks bang like crazy on one rickety kit. While barely any of these events were successful musically, the overall catharsis was always the more attainable (and certainly more noble) goal.
Hammering out a wall of skittering percussion, Nervous Cop's assault by tom-tom conjures these late-night exercises in caffeinated stamina. On the debut release from the side project of Hella's Zach Hill and Deerhoof's Greg Saunier, Nervous Cop beat out a William Hooker impersonation for a little over a half hour then call it a day. The clashing/smashing smackdown pauses once or twice to allow a plucked or ringing harp jam from Joanna Newsom of The Please (who after two beautifully countrified self-released solo discs, has something coming out on Drag City sometime in 2004) and run-of-the-mill digital twiddling from electro-acoustic composer John Dieterich, also of Deerhoof.
To place Nervous Cop somewhere within the context of the main players' history, the stuff is more interesting than Hella, less compelling than Deerhoof. I never cared much for Don Caballero or math rock in general, so Hella's post-Breadwinner intricacy doesn't move me. Deerhoof, though, have impressively notched a genre of their own. With this album, Hill and Saunier certainly rock an admirable barrage, eschewing lazy-boy fills for flat-out pounding, but it never gels enough to stand-up as anything other than a pleasant, albeit thin, excursion by two guys who don't usually play much music like this. All in all, the compositions, if not strong, are gleefully sporadic.
Per the law of dynamics, the avalanche begins sedately with "Setting the Bushes on Fire", a 33-second clip of classical harp and incidental tones. Then comes 36 seconds of manic, rattling hardware percussion arbitrarily titled "Rice Precipitation". A similar sound gathers swells of electronics on "Nonrum Nonproblem" and "Get Wolf Boy and Get in Context". While continuing the patterns of the album as a whole, the newly beaten drums work a pulsation into the overall palate. The spare electronics-- little gurgles, a random computerized raindrop-- don't shift much either. Throughout, you get that sense that this was one long solo chopped into parts, layered later.
The first long piece, "III Pearls", borrows the electronics of the prior bits, and the drums continue in same patterning, but an introduction of a distorted sound-wave musses things up a bit. Eventually the drums grow frantic and satisfyingly overlap. Another epic, "Frank vs. Frank", includes an airy harp solo: the mix shifts, the drums are distanced, a pretty disjunction arises, sounds operate singularly in a weird collective path. In time, of course, the insistent drums overtake the harp, an assault of cymbal crashes and rides. This ravenous rock 'n' roll give-and-take continues through the finale.
Though I imagine a real-life anxious policeman sounding a bit more shrill, Nervous Cop do a good job locating a rhythm and sticking to it. Still, while the set offers a partially satisfying dose of chaos, in the realm of drum-based maniacs I'd rather take an unguided tour through grindcore, Harry Pussy, William Hooker and Art Blakey. Or the nearest Sam Ash, actually.
