Chris "Daddy" Dave, one of the most recognized drummers of the international jazz & hip-hop scene releases a 2nd album with his "Drumhedz".
Chris Dave was born in Houston and started playing drums at the age of 3. The drummer quickly built a musical culture by playing gospel in church and listening to big names in jazz like John Coltrane or Miles Davis. After graduation, he began playing with the RnB band Mint Condition. Since then, you could hear it on Adele's 21 or Justin Bieber's Purpose. And for the more initiated, he played with Kenny Garret, D'Angelo, or Robert Glasper.
Chris Dave and The Drumhedz was released on January 27 on the prestigious Blue Note label.
A more structured album than the previous one
Chris Dave presents the second album of his solo project. The first, Mixtape, was released in 2013. As the name suggests, the content was closer to a mixtape than a traditional album.
Here, the 15 tracks of the new album form a fairly homogeneous whole and are built with recurring parts. In the songs carried by the singing, Chris Dave puts himself in a role of accompaniment. The drum parts help structure the song, as in Cosmic Intercourse (with Casey Benjamin on vocoder) or Destiny N Stereo, the first single from the album.
However, the jazz and free side is omnipresent, and we quickly let ourselves be carried away by the solos and the atmosphere. Special mention to Dat Feelin' which sets up a rhythmic trance with very jazz piano lines, and which ends with a gospel tirade from the singer SiR.
Or Black Hole (feat. Anderson.Paak), with an energetic afrobeat rhythm, reminiscent of Fela Kuti.
The genius of the Drumhedz
Who are the Drumhedz?
On the album, most of the songs are played with singers like Anderson.Paak, Bilal, Anna Wise or Phonte Coleman. The other musicians credited inside the disc are just as brilliant. Examples include Pino Paladino on bass (who accompanied D'Angelo at the same time as Chris Dave), James Poyser on piano (The Roots), and Isaiah Sharkey or Tim Stewart (Lady Gaga) on guitar.
Sometimes, by putting big names side by side in the studio to record an album, the sauce doesn't take. But here, musicians are so used to playing with each other on tour or on records that the chemistry is real and makes sense. Chris Dave managed to build a family of jazz, soul and hip-hop musicians.
There is no false note in this album. The influences are so diverse that everyone can find his account, and the whole forms a very rich whole. Chris Dave reveals all the facets of his drumming game, and proves that he remains very versatile.
Chris Dave spoke of the album in these terms: "People say you can't have all of these sounds in one place – but how we hear things, it's just music. You like it or you don't. This is a 'why can't you?' album."
9/10
You can listen to Chris Dave on March 9 with D'Angelo and on March 10 with Yasin Bey (Mos Def). The opportunity to discover the incredible playing of this drummer!
