Pittsburgh Magazine Review of Revelation #9 : By Phillip Harris

Jim Donovan has always been the backbone of Rusted Root's sound. His drumming is powerful but stark, leaving room for lots of percussion and tailor made for filling big rooms and concert halls. Donovan, a true gentleman, has had a pretty busy solo career outside of the band, releasing a number of CDs including Indigo, a meditation CD and Pulse, a collaboration with Pittsburgh's duo of higher consciousness, Life in Balance. He also teaches drumming workshops around the country and has released a couple of instructional drumming CDs.

Donovan's latest CD is Revelation #9, 9 tracks described as "electro-tribal dance music" featuring Donovan's traditional thumping tribal drumming and incorporating breakbeat, noise and some wicked electric guitar played by Donovan himself.

In fact, all of the instrumentation on the album was done by Donovan, a lot of it while on the road with Rusted Root, using traditional instruments as well as synths, samplers and computers. The result is a trippy dance record that, although, it doesn't come with a strobe filled light show, elicits and implies one. It's always after 1 am when listening to Revelation #9; you know you should go home but you keep telling yourself, 'I'll go after this song' and then the next one comes on, and before you know it the sun's coming up, and you've danced yourself into ecstasy. Again.

The title of the CD refers to Revolution #9, the experimental John Lennon track off of the Beatles' 'White Album'. On Revolution #9, Lennon used tape loops of found pieces of music and sound to create a abstract track that at the time, 1968, was about as far out a piece of music as you could find on a pop record. Donovan, and the Legion of Electronic Tribal Drummers, have taken Lennon's germ of an idea to places and pulses he may have never imagined possible. He would be proud.