Susie Ibarra - "Drum Sketches"
Susie Ibarra - "Drum Sketch 8" (Innova 2007)
Susie Ibarra - Drum Sketches / Innova
Sometime in 2003 or 2004, I caught Prefuse 73 on tour supporting the release of his near-universally acclaimed album One Word Extinguisher. Joining Guillermo Scott Herren on stage was his typical partner in turntable-sampler-mixer-effects debauchery, DJ Nobody aka Elvin Estrela. I’ve caught the pair live a number of times and thoroughly enjoy the knob twiddling performances, but for this particular show, Herren had a secret weapon. He enlisted jazz drummer Susie Ibarra to accentuate his programmed rhythms, an effect that ran twofold as both a bit more interesting (and better looking) focal point than two hairy guys with their heads buried in a web of color-coded cords and a more resounding organic bump to accompany the electronic beeps.
If keeping up with Herren’s continuously shifting and stuttering rhythms wasn’t impressive enough though, Ibarra reportedly did not practice with the pair prior to the show. She simply played on instinct, and an incredibly quick instinct at that. Herren would drop the beat, and within one or two loops, she’d catch the groove, lock into the rhythm and start accentuating the particular tune with her own improvisations. The set’s playful vibe was contagious because not only was Ibarra’s appreciation of each beat physically apparent (smiles, head-nods, etc), but Herren and Estrela would repeatedly turn around and momentarily stare in awe as she percussively took each tune to new aural heights.
At the time, the Filipino drummer was new to me, but she has in fact been garnishing respect in the contemporary jazz scene since the mid-90s. Ibarra’s first encounters with the drums were via punk and hardcore gigs, but her realization of percussion’s possibility came from a chance encounter with Buster Smith, Sun Ra’s drummer in the 80s and early 90s. With his more formal and extensive training – along with lessons from free jazz great Milford Graves and the much traveled Vernel Fournier – Ibarra honed a multi-dimensional style that infused the many different layers of jazz with more worldly influences, especially the music of Southeast Asia. And that range of ability shows in her résumé: a shortlist of artists she’s performed and composed with in the last fifteen years includes modern jazz players William Parker, David S. Ware, Matthew Shipp, Craig Taborn, Butch Morris, Zeena Parkins, Derek Bailey, as well as experimental performers like John Zorn, Thurston Moore and Yusef Komanyakaa, electronica cats like Herren and Ikue Mori, and even contributed to a few Yo La Tengo tracks.
Ibarra’s first solo album following a number of well received Tzadik ensemble releases continues to explore not only rhythm as a lyrical force but the culture of her heritage as well. The aptly titled Drum Sketches features the percussionist solo – except for a few ambient field recordings – on her drum kit along with instruments native to the album’s inspiration, the Philippines. It has also been commissioned as a live performance piece, of which visual artist Makoto Fujimura, the man behind the album’s intriguing cover art, joins her on stage to paint live in reaction to the music.
The album is bookended by two Kulintang pieces: “Binalig” and “Sinulog”. Ibarra plays the bright sounding gong kettles with a sort of delicate forcefulness. Over a field recording of ambient chirping insects, birds and amphibians, the chiming tones dance like a torch’s flame in the wind; the traditional cadential patterns just have this hypnotizing and unpredictable melodic rhythm. For “Drum Sketch 6”, she switches to a Surunay xylophone, which like the Kulintang gongs, doesn’t sound overtly foreign, but the odd tunings create an exotic, implacable vibe. The solo xylophone track finds Ibarra teasing the resonation of the bars with a number of separate rhythmic patterns rather than locking into one distinct melody or groove.
The drum kit pieces range from the longer formed, lilting solos to more searching pieces where Ibarra utilizes hand percussion and more nontraditional approaches to the kit. I’m not sure if sketches “3” and “8” were actually performed and recorded live or if the crowd noise was spliced in later, but both sound like Ibarra is entertaining a crowd with much success. The former features an almost tribal tom rhythm adjoined with jazzy improvisations on the traps and cymbals; the latter sounds more indigenous with a pulsing polyrhythm egging on the crowd’s hoots and hollers. While during a few of the more experimental pieces you can visualize Ibarra’s means to the sound – the circular brush strokes on a snare during sketch “4” for example – the means to a couple of the sounds completely baffle me. Sketch “5” for instance is made up of this two-minute mysterious croaking resonance that eventually opens up into cascading muffled cymbal crashes.
Solo drum albums are not typically large crowd pleasers as their fan base is almost solely limited to other drummers despite the genre. Ibarra though transcends this pigeonhole by crafting a record that doesn’t as much display her technical prowess as translate her interpretations of Filipino ambiance. The subdued record, joining jazz drumming to free improv, modern composition, and a slew of her native styles, is not overtly challenging – but don’t mistake that for a lack of intrigue. Quite the contrary actually, Ibarra’s interpretation of the Philippines’ aural landscape is brimming with textural nuances and captivating idiosyncrasies, and it makes for an interesting listen no matter your taste.
