Jack Callahan is a young percussionist currently residing in Amherst Massachusetts. Seeing a recent set of his brought me back to the time when I first saw a dude bow/scrape/squeal on a single drum (in Callahan's case: the snare) with a variety of mismatched equipment. That sense of wonder and excitement for the power of acoustic percussion had returned to this listener's ears. In other words: the kid is fresh! He produces richly rewarding harmonics with the edge of a cymbal on the skin of his drum that veer from calming to terrifying. He also makes wonderful use of the natural vibrations of the snare springs. The success of a recording of this kind depends so much on the little details (volume, clarity, tape hiss) and I'm happy to say this is a very clean recording with incredible dynamic range. The loud parts are speaker-vibrating and the quiet parts nearly made me think the tape was over. Expect to be hearing more from Mr. Callahan as his playing develops and he finds others who are tuned to the same wave-length.
Look Jack up and get one of the last few copies of the tape (the first on his imprint) by contacting him directly at tetembe@gmail.com
http://jack-callahan.blogspot.com
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