Percussionist, composer, and filmmaker Evan Chapman recently released Caustics, an album of solo drum set and electronics works, including “Bird Fish,” a piece by our saxophonist Anna Meadors. The album includes pieces by composers Ted Babcock, Ian Chang, Robert Honstein, Molly Joyce, Alexis C. Lamb, Alicia Walter and Evan Chapman himself.

Anna developed her piece in the studio, finding the sound world of the piece by putting a low pass filter on some recorded saxophone ideas, which gave the saxophone an underwater texture. After recording several short phrases, she was able to play along with the ideas on the studio’s drum set, just to get some basic parts. After getting the structure of the electronics done, she scored the piece out, and sent the materials to Evan.

Evan recorded the album at his Four/Ten Media studio space in Philadelphia, PA, and premiered the pieces at So Percussion‘s Brooklyn Bound series in November 2018, on a night that featured Evan, Jason Treuting’s Go Placidly With Haste, and the trio version of Joy on Fire. The album was released online on April 10, 2020 and is available for purchase on Bandcamp (link below) as well as for streaming on Spotify and Apple Music. The album is dynamic, and the composers, a combination of percussionists and non-percussionists, approached their pieces in widely different and thoughtful ways. Evan’s playing is always fantastic, and the album—which made Wilco’s Spring 2020 Recommended Listening list—expands the vision of what a solo drum set record means.