Whenever a package from Zurich’s Hula Honeys comes, I end up in love with a new artist. Thus it goes for Simon Berz, a percussionist who not only created each drummed 7-inch cover (you read correctly), but has transformed drum beats into solitary statements of defiance. So few drummers can stake such a claim, but Berz is different from those few, for his take on percussion is minimalist in approach, but bombastic in delivery. How? He “gives” away 50 drum samples on this double 7-inch. The title track is “traditional” in that it is a song with a regular running time and an individual statement on sound design via drumming. Yet two sides of the four include 50 looping samples of percussive beats. If you get jazzed on one particular beat, it will last as long as the needle meets the groove. The carpel-tunnel I developed lifting and carefully placing the needle onto the proceeding samples was pleasurable. Berz has created a turntablist’s dream; a traveling business card of good faith for the experimental community. Clever use of 7-inch technology, even if most stylized DJs just hit play on their laptops and curate a real-time Spotify playlist. For those holdouts, Berz has got you covered.
More about: Simon Berz
