solo albums by drummers

Paal Nilssen-Love has a couple of these, Miro and 27 Years Later.

Bruce Ditmas - Yellow Dust (always seems impressive and like something I should like when I dip in but never quite listened to the whole thing through).

Mickey Hart surely has a whole bunch. I like this 90s Supralingua album - global / tribal / drum circle type thing, more going especially vocals but the focus is drums.

used to own this solo drummer compilation feat Fugazi, Don Cab, Storm & Stress personnel: https://www.discogs.com/Various-Membranaphonics/release/3221752

it was a neat idea but not that exciting to actually listen to iirc

recently been digging this album by a British experimental dude called Jaxson Payne. it's kind of late 80s sounding house/techno (makes me think of Bang The Party or someone like that?) played live on MIDI drums all in one take

Great thread, will make time to check some stuff out.

Recently I've fallen in love with Jay Daniel's Broken Knowz album from late last year. A young DJ/producer from Detroit who's been drumming almost all his life. The album's based on his live drumming which he then combined with programmed drums (MPC) and keys (Fender Rhodes, Juno 106, RX). It's a really beguiling and absorbing listen. "Paradise Valley" is so beautiful.

if you want, I can send you a not-the-best-recording of the thing I did last year that was basically solo drums + electronics
yes please!!

i am going to dig into these ASAP, thank you all for the recommendations
some names are familiar but i've never heard any of these :)

Love this one. Carla Bley, Robert Wyatt, a Floyd and assorted other folk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEoN0QApLSM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCzjnE5dmts

Think these come under the category of 'any album made by a drummer'.

eh. ok.

Neal Morgan, who I know best from his drumming with Joanna Newsom (prior to her last album), released a few albums of drums and multi-tracked vocals. The first one in particular, To The Breathing World I think was really enjoyable. This seems like the best place to listen online, he's fairly under-represented on YouTube.

http://www.juno.co.uk/products/neal-morgan-to-the-breathing-world/373995-01/

Andrew Cyrille: "What About?" from 1969.
Jerome Cooper: "The Unpredictability of Predictability" from 1979.

andrew cyrille and milford graves did a record together called "dialogue of the drums" on their label ips (institute of percussive studies)

Stewart Copeland's Rumblefish soundtrack is probably my favorite thing along these lines

Also the Birdman soundtrack.

Billy Martin has a really great solo album from '02 (I think he's super underrated because of MMW's jam band associations):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwORqecCebQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XaXCusqqko

^ Really nice!

It's interesting there are a lot of straight ahead records with drummers as "leaders" but very few of them are classic records - Max Roach and Tony Williams have some great ones but there aren't a lot of others that come to mind.

That said I've been into this Jo Jones Trio record lately. It seems like in a lot of cases they're not all that different from other jazz trio/quartet/quintet records except that they feature the drummer a little more prominently and maybe the drummer's compositions. Here it seems like they mic'd/mixed things so the drums are more prominent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiV8QVueu0s

I also discovered there's a Jo Jones/Milt Hinton duo record where Jo Jones plays percussion. Want to give it a good headphone listen, not really good for office listening.

I dunno, like Billy Cobhams Spectrum? That's classic. More recently, I love the two or three Brian Blade records, too.

I've had a copy of Reebop Kwaku Baah & Ganoua - Trance. Another one that seems like it should be great but the lo-fi recording doesn't work that well in this instance.

It's interesting there are a lot of straight ahead records with drummers as "leaders" but very few of them are classic records - Max Roach and Tony Williams have some great ones but there aren't a lot of others that come to mind.

Um...Art Blakey, maybe?

And I'm just starting to dig into his discography, but Elvin Jones has some amazing late '60s/early '70s records.

I've got a ton of great jazz records led by drummers (thinking Joe Chambers, Billy Drummond, Herlin Riley, etc), but that's another thread.

a duo record here:

https://www.discogs.com/Derek-Bailey-Jamie-Muir-Dart-Drug/master/110081

I still can't think of any true "totally solo" drummer records other than the Milford Graves and Corsano ones mentioned.

Man, this thread led me to discover this '87 record by Bob Moses and Billy Martin, it's insane. Lots of electronic loops and '80s effects, West African drumming over gated reverb beats, this has to be a treasure trove for a certain kind of dj, right?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE_kMOaaFxg&list=PLNOQTYAhGu92OGs57-xGCEdlDOi46FymU&index=6

trying that embed again:

https://youtu.be/SE_kMOaaFxg?list=PLNOQTYAhGu92OGs57-xGCEdlDOi46FymU

new kid millions/man forever sounds promising!
http://ravelinmagazine.com/posts/man-forever-plays-what-kid-millions-has-always-wanted/#content

Ronald Shannon Jackson's Puttin' On Dog is nothing but drums and vocals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDXegO6MylQ

http://cps-static.rovicorp.com/3/JPG_400/MI0002/306/MI0002306282.jpg?partner=allrovi.com

Side 1 of this fits the bill. Side 2 adds Carter Jefferson on saxes, Jon Faddis and Lew Soloff on trumpets for a return to your previously scheduled programming.
The first half is a tutorial in african, cuban, and afro-cuban polyrhythms.

Solo track on Tony Williams' Spring:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pnTEPOOl2DE

Pretty much anything by Eiko Ishibashi, esp Carapace and Imitation of Life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gp3JE9XagY

https://img1.etsystatic.com/044/1/7167637/il_570xN.651265039_t9kc.jpg

i love this.
the first real tack>>head album basically.

Tony's Spring and Life Time are such incredible records. It's really a shame Tony didn't do a whole string of albums like that. Taking nothing away from Emergency! and (turn it over), those Blue Note dates hinted at a fascinating compositional voice that, sadly, never re-emerged.

The Mi-Gu (drummer from Cornelius' band) self titled record is ace too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AIjT3jL2tQ

Not strictly solo drums, but this 1977 duets album by Max Roach and Abdullah Ibrahim has some pretty great moments.

Really enjoying the new Andrea Belfi album:

https://andreabelfi.bandcamp.com/album/ore

never heard of that guy but he does sound interesting!

Reggie Watts to thread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=344OpaQCAQI

John McEntire - Reach The Rock (OMPS), et al.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coFNfX6GNBo

Not drumming per se, but any chance to revisit the funky grooves of Mark's Keyboard Repair is welcomed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLoNNHAeV0Y&index=5&list=PLAE2A55CE262F866F

Eddie Prevost (AMM) has several totally solo records, e.g. this one:

https://www.discogs.com/Eddie-Pr%C3%A9vost-Material-Consequences/release/432072

this was a split album with Organum, but still awesome:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3lW68FxmXI

My high school drum teacher put out his first album of solo drums this year, and it's great. Really melodic and not about chops, more like drum lullabies at times.

https://daveschoepke.bandcamp.com/
https://open.spotify.com/album/6Adz9EMIoPxuy2vjEYLYEV?si=wMui5bdpSVit_2ufHzm9mg

cool!

here's two more:

https://www.discogs.com/Cleve-Pozar-Solo-Percussion/release/4341542

https://www.discogs.com/Sun-City-Girls-Piano-Bar-For-Drummers-Only/release/797635

Great thread, hadn't seen it before. Harry Bertoia built these sound sculptures and recorded albums of them---pretty fine visual results too:
Harry Bertoia

Is this thread limited to jazz/rock/funk/etc? Cos I can think of more examples of solo percussion albums in classical music than in those genres.

Not limited -- post away!

I went to see Kim So Ra last week and she was a phenomenal bandleader + i was super into her music. i bought the CD! i think it's called A Sign of Rain.

Buddy Rich’s ‘The Roar of ‘74’ kinda blew my mind last week - caused me to fall down the ever entertaining Buddy Rich YouTube hole ...

Ha, I tried listening to that the other day and just couldn’t do it. It felt like a salesperson was shouting at me, arranged for a big band.

Ultimately, the only Buddy Rich recordings I dig are the Lester Young Trio records with Nat King Cole, and the bus tapes.

I like this drum solo, which seems just discreetly tweaked by DJ:
https://octoocta.bandcamp.com/track/ecstatic-beat

Also wasn't some of Endtroducing turntables x live-in-the-studio drummer?

Never heard that, I thought the whole point is that it was all samples?

Re: Buddy, I just wrote this on Twitter today

it's become so fashionable to hate on him because he was a fucking asshole + didn't play especially cool music + and has become shorthand for showing off, that I think he's actually underrated in a weird way

— CHANTS (@ChantsWI) September 30, 2019

xpost maybe I'm thinking of a later album---doesn't he sometimes play drums, percussion?
New one due in November:
https://www.factmag.com/2019/09/23/dj-shadow-to-release-double-album-our-pathetic-age/

Stewart Copeland - "Rumblefish" soundtrack already mentioned, but also "The Rhythmatist"

In a similar English-drummer-in-Africa vein, Mick Fleetwood's "The Visitor"

Oh wait, Copeland's American. I'm an idiot.

Robert Wyatt's "End of an Ear" was what jumped into my mind when I read the thread title.

xpost maybe I'm thinking of a later album---doesn't he sometimes play drums, percussion?

Are you thinking of RJD2 maybe? He started with breaks, and then obsessively learned to engineer and play (and then sample) his own breaks to match the qualities of a nice & dirty '60s/'70s recording.