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Rita haney dave lombardo2/26/2024 He thinks he’s American.’ They couldn’t relate to going to concerts and listening to a band play rock music.” There were times where other kids would tease me, saying: ‘Oh, he doesn’t think he’s Cuban anymore. “Because Cubans were into Cuban music, into dancing and disco. “Where I did feel a little bit alienated was from my own people,” he admits. It wasn’t until later I realised: wow, that’s so Cuban – that’s such a timbale player run!”ĭid his Cuban heritage leave him feeling at all separate from the predominantly white 80s thrash scene? Lombardo suggests it was in fact a strength, helping him understand and adapt to the comparative simplicity of 4/4 rock. “In Angel of Death there’s this double bass pattern where I hit my toms over the top in a syncopated form that has been used by Latin jazz percussionists for years. “With Slayer I was unknowingly adding Afro-Cuban patterns to my drum rolls,” he says. Lombardo had also come to understand that his playing had been less conventional than he had thought. I couldn’t believe there were other people that thought the way I do.” “It felt like a whole new door had opened,” he says of the experience. In the 90s Lombardo realised that desire when he cofounded the forward-thinking metal act Grip Inc, while an improv gig alongside John Zorn and Mike Patton of Faith No More and Fantômas provided a road-to-Damascus moment. They were all different, but there was this one guy common to it all.”ĭave Lombardo: Journey of the Host – video “I remember being in the studio mixing Reign in Blood while Run-DMC were mixing their album and Beastie Boys were doing Licensed to Ill. If the idea of the man who drummed on Dead Skin Mask rattling a plastic banana into a microphone feels incongruous, Lombardo makes clear that he’s always been keen to push himself, a lesson he learned from working with producer Rick Rubin. And I have a suitcase full of children’s toys – little clappers, shakers that look like bananas and apples that all have different tones and personalities.” “I have a collection of congas, bongos, batás, djembes, blocks – things I’ve picked up on the road. “It was a chance to bring out everything,” he says. The cohesion Lombardo speaks of is there too – no mean feat for an album featuring a bewildering array of drums. There needed to be a balance and emotional depth – more than just ‘look at me!’ The mission was to compile as many little drum movements as I could, and mould them into a cohesive body of work.”Īnd Rites of Percussion is surprisingly un-showy, tending toward ambient immersion, cinematic conjurings and transporting moments that border on the kosmisch. “At first I felt it was maybe a bit self-indulgent,” says Lombardo from his California studio, chuckling when I make parallels with the 80s trend for virtuoso guitar-shredding albums. This kaleidoscopic résumé is the backdrop to his debut solo album, Rites of Percussion – an instrumental record whose drums, piano and wide range of gongs and percussion speak to a life spent devouring everything from funk and hip-hop to Afro-Cuban, Haitian and west African rhythms. Slayer pictured in 1986, with Lombardo on the left.
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