The first fight I got into with my best friend from college happened when I equated his type of artists to bangers. Connor was a drummer—a batteur, the French kids called him—so I studied the stigma: percussionists were beat keepers and timesticks, not melodic or musical. They simply banged on things.
Through four years of recitals I was repeatedly proven wrong—and I was again today after witnessing the work of French Wikidrummer Julien Audigier, late of De Palmas and Nina Attal.
In this video, he lays down two minutes of sound-shifting funk through the amplification system that is our really real world. What you find plays out like a John Cage experiment for the YouTube era: The music comes from everywhere. In Audigier’s case, tones echo off every garage roof, soccer field, courtyard, and industrial factory, with about six more scenes intermixed within the clip.
“No artificial reverb added,” he stressed. Just a kick, hat, carpet, and snare.
Photo via Audio Zéro/YouTube