On his upcoming solo album, For a Gallery on the Moon, drummer, percussionist and composer Brian Shankar Adler seeks to journey “deeper into the layered topography of rhythm with a set of nine concentrated meditations representing the space between the heart and the moon.”
For the recording process, the introspective composer retreated to his self-built “cave” in the middle of his Brooklyn apartment, a space “so quiet he could hear the faint vibrations of a whisper and so small that it fit only himself, a few small instruments, and microphones.”
The resulting work is a complex study of rhythm and vibration as essential elements for sonic expression. Playing bowed cymbals, buddha machine, ghatam, gong, kanjira, key chimes, manjira, mridang, opera cymbal, paper, ride cymbals, river rocks, slit drum, tabla and thunder sheet, the artist reveals a “primal percussive world” which he explores in his distinctively methodical manner.
For a Gallery on the Moon follows Adler’s excellent quintet album, Fourth Dimension, and is scheduled for release in September 2020 on Chant Records.
Today, The Music and Myth premiers the album’s first single, “Paper, Rock, Scissors,” along with its accompanying music video. With stop motion by Stefan Zeniuk, this playful video is inspired by the children’s game of chance, and mixes anthropologically ambiguous percussion with anthropomorphic characters, communicating through gestures and hidden signals.
Check it out below!
You can pre-order For a Gallery on the Moon on Bandcamp.
The Music and Myth 