Drummer\/composer Booker Stardrum delivers a new powerful solo album Close-up On The Outside (27th Feb 2026), his first for We Jazz Records. The new record sees Stardrum (also a member of SML and frequent collaborator of Lisel, Photay, Horse Lords, Wendy Eisenberg, and Jefre Cantu-Ledesma) doubling down on the earthy tactility of human sound and communication while also exploring rich, electroacoustic landscapes. The album, released on LP and digitally, involves Stardrum\u2019s close collaborators Anna Butterss, Jeremiah Chiu, Chris Williams, Lester St. Louis, Logan Hone and Michael Coleman.<\/p>\n
While he now lives and works near Kingston, New York, Booker Stardrum made the first notes heard on the new album at an artist residency in the Catskill Mountains in September 2022. The opening title track and the brief \u201cMinturn\u201d place Stardrum\u2019s solo music in the stillness of a late summer farm, with field recordings of insects and birds localizing the music; wooden balafon-like strokes are then looped into the foundational structure of the closing \u201cInside Sounds,\u201d hovering at poles that are both plaintive and direct. Dry, homemade mallet instruments and field recordings also nod in the direction of Harry Partch, the composer and inventor whose microtonal instruments were under the care of Stardrum\u2019s father, the late\u00a0composer Dean Drummond (1949-2013).<\/span><\/p>\n There\u2019s a lot of warmth and sweat in Stardrum\u2019s music\u2013\u2013even if it\u2019s electroacoustic, one feels that it\u2019s made by people, and there is a biologically systemic quality to the way in which digital and analog sounds are interpolated. He creates textures through midi controllers, samples, and loops, wherein acoustic sequences are altered to fit plugged-in concepts or acoustic instrumentalists are brought in to humanize what he\u2019s already mapped out electronically. The people he chose to work with on Close-up on the Outside are mostly artists he\u2019s worked with for years, or been connected to through mutual instigators. It\u2019s important to note that Stardrum, as much as he treats each instrumental section or fragment as fodder for alteration, also respects the individuality of his collaborators. Threading the unique and very present feel of other musicians into his universe with an electronic hand is a fascinating challenge. Stardrum\u2019s compositional intuition allows him to draft, expand, and remove excess as pieces congeal and then breathe in a moment\u2019s time.<\/p>\n Bringing it back to the earthbound carpet that he\u2019s striving for, the push-pull between humanism and machinery ties into an ecological concept that Stardrum wants to call attention to. A teetering, driving piece called \u201cThird Nature\u201d on the new record, as he puts it, \u201cgets its name from a concept in social ecology, that humans are part of nature even though there have been different philosophies that separate humans from nature. First nature is the natural world, second nature is human development, and social ecologists remind us that we are of nature and then the question is, how can we do a better job, exist, be of nature, and affect nature in a cohabitual way?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Black vinyl, inside out sleeve, polylined inner sleeve.\r\n\r\nOut 27.2.2026 on We Jazz Records.\r\n\r\nAll compositions by Booker Stardrum in collaboration with the performing artists.\r\nDrums recorded by Joey Weiss at The Horse Barn and Sam Evian at Flying Cloud. Bass recorded by Chris Cohen in his garage. Everything else recorded at Denniston Hill, various home studios in New York and Los Angeles, and outside.\r\n\r\nMixed by James Krivchenia\r\nMastered by Juho Luukkainen\r\nOriginal artwork by Miranda Javid\r\nDesign by Matti Nives","protected":false},"featured_media":3143525,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"product_brand":[],"product_cat":[22,8012,16],"product_tag":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3143524","1":"product","2":"type-product","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"product_cat-electronic","7":"product_cat-experimental","8":"product_cat-jazz","10":"first","11":"instock","12":"taxable","13":"shipping-taxable","14":"purchasable","15":"product-type-simple"},"acf":[],"mb":[],"mfb_rest_fields":["title"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/digelius.com\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product\/3143524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/digelius.com\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/digelius.com\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/product"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digelius.com\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3143525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/digelius.com\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3143524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"product_brand","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digelius.com\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_brand?post=3143524"},{"taxonomy":"product_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digelius.com\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_cat?post=3143524"},{"taxonomy":"product_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/digelius.com\/fi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product_tag?post=3143524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}