Back in the '80's I remember wondering why the drum set wasn't being investigated in terms of extended technique. It seemed that people had been jamming screwdrivers between guitar strings and leaning in to play the piano soundboard for years, but drumming stayed fairly traditional. Sure, there were lots of people playing "free time", but not many working with the idea that a drum is essentially a sound amplifier with tunable membranes.

20 years on there now seems no end to the number of drummers finding different ways of sounding their kits: Sean Meehan, Jon Mueller, Tatsuya Nakatani, Le Quan Nihn and Tim Barnes are a few names that leap to mind, but there are many more where they came from. This is in no way a complaint.

Michael Vorfeld and Christian Wolfarth are Vorwolf, and Snake's Eyes is a satisfying disc of their percussive interactions, with plenty of bowing and scraping cymbals, drumheads scratched, pitches bent, and at times some kind of string instrument being plucked to emit brittle notes. Most tracks here start quietly and build through overlapping layers of sound, sometimes complementary, other times clashing. "Facing Outwards" is initially barely audible but eventually a scrubbing sound is heard underneath a cloud of metal harmonics. Snare taps are added and the metal cloud blooms and dies before a buzz-roll on the snare drum is bent to deliver a number of timbres. Then an ominous industrial mini-scrape rises and falls on a drone. "Quickly Ousted" differs in its modus of clattering and quick time thumps. It�s a beautiful recording, the pitches and timbre variations clearly heard, and with this kind of playing, that's often what it's all about.

I remember reading an interview with Sonny Murray, often sited as the father of free drumming, wherein he stated that there was nothing more that could be done with the drums. I wonder what Murray would think of this current crop of kit spankers.