Drums Of Death

I’m feeling a little lazy this morning and to snap me out of this inertia and get into work-mode, I’m listening to Drums of Death: Field Recordings in Ghana, a John Zorn curated compilation of traditional religious ceremonial drumming recorded in Ghana in 1996. I had a plan to listen to this album at some stage this week - last Sunday I caught about an hour of Plague of the Zombies on TV and the slightly cringe-inducing scenes of African bushmen thumping on their drums put the album in mind. The music itself is absolutely first rate with the drummers beating out incredibly complex, hypnotic, interlocking rhythms, and the recordings are pleasingly earthy with chants, calls, invocations and exhalations occasionally straying into the sound field...