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CMU Approved
Approved: Adam Betts
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 16 August 2016
How is a drum solo like a sneeze? You can tell it’s coming and there’s nothing you can do about it. So goes the old joke. But if you’ve ever seen Adam Betts play, whether with Three Trapped Tigers, The Heritage Orchestra or Squarepusher’s Shobaleader One band, you’ll know that anything he does is rarely expected.
For his debut solo album, ‘Colossal Squid’, Betts takes the Three Trapped Tigers ethos of trying to make complex electronic music with live instruments and really hones in on the percussive elements of acts like Aphex Twin and Autechre. Rather than slaving over synths and samplers though, he triggers everything from behind the drum kit.
Having initially worked on the new record in the studio in the traditional way, recording a live session then convinced him to re-record it all live in one sitting. “It clicked that this was the way to represent the material in the best way possible – performed entirely live, as it happened”, he explains. “Any ‘mistakes’, any looseness, felt like a step away from the feeling of material being written with the click of a mouse at a computer. It’s really a punk album with tape delays instead of guitar chords”.
He continues: “So much electronic music has had concerns with performance – how much of the amazing programmed music can be recreated live? For me music has been so much about the connection between the performers onstage and the audience”.
Watch the video for the album’s opening track, ‘Drumbones’, here:
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