Drummer, percussionist, essayist, theoretician and poet, Doug Hammond’s costumes are various but matching. The aesthetic he has presented on stage since his debut in the wake of “The Tribe” is coherent. This “New Beginning” is the fruit of two recordings made at the end of 2009: One performed in the company of Stéphane Payen and of Reggie Washington at “La Dynamo de Pantin” (Paris/France), the other in Austria, where the musician has settled after teaching there. When he takes up the word, it is of an undoubted intensity, between recitative speech and urban talk with a minimalistic pulse and beat.

Bruno Guermonprez