jeph jerman

Marking the end of an era living, as Jeph will simultaneously be leaving Seattle for Arizona and discarding his drum kit. Having finally integrated the two extremes of his work with primitive units Blowhole and Hands To, his work has moved far beyond to a state of refinement within the field of free improvisation. The last year has seen him focus more on playing with other improvisers including Wally Shoup, Paul Hoskin, John Butcher, Dave Knott and stagings of John Zorn's Cobra game. In addition to this, he has done a few solo percussion performances (including one opening up for Kaffe Matthews and another at the second Beyond Music Sound Festival in California) which have been very enthusiastically received by audiences. Before this was allowed to slip away into the ether like so many other works of this nature, we have put Jeph into the studio with engineer Scott Colburn (Sun City Girls, Climax Golden Twins, Eyvind Kang, remastering of Captain Beefheart box set) to capture eleven minutes of this stage of his work. He provides a varied and cohesive set of music using techniques such as playing drum heads with rubber balls, playing cymbals with finger while bending them to change the pitch and timbre, flaying the kit with guitar strings, and augmenting the kit with his key chime (found house keys suspended), toy xylophone, and overtone singing.