Revelation #9 Review
Pittsburgh Post Gazette
Thursday, June 19, 2003
By Scott Mervis
There was a hint of Jim Donovan's "Revelation #9" on the last track of the last Rusted Root record. The band was looking to do something big and rhythmic without taking another "Drum Trip," so the drummer cooked up "People of My Village," an uncharacteristic venture into techno for the tribal-acoustic group.
Donovan was drawn to electronic music through bands such as Crystal Method and, particularly, Meat Beat Manifesto.
"The guy behind Meat Beat Manifesto, Jack Dangers, continues to blow my mind with what he does with drums," Donovan says. "I had never heard anything like it before, and it really busted up what I thought electronic music was, which was the typical boom-bish-boom-bish Metropol crap that I don't like. This stuff had some real emotion and thought put into it."
Donovan worked with Meat Beat Manifesto bassist Mark Pistol to mix the Rusted Root track and, in the midst of that project, started working on a solo record using a recording studio he carries in a suitcase.
He recorded guitar and drums parts, along with various found sounds like a clock radio and snippets of television. "A lot of it was really spur of the moment, capturing different moments or ideas, and the more time-intensive work was learning to mix it and shape it."
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Photo by Duane Reider
The result is a record that ranges from monster dance tracks with metallic riffs, such as the title track and "Las Vegas," to more hypnotic grooves like "Love 1," which features a guest vocal by Root singer Liz Berlin. "Unblind" ventures into hip-hop dub with rapper Blowout, whom he met on the last Root tour.
Donovan says of the varying beats: "I've always been into things that make people move and make people dance. I'm really interested in what happens when you use repetitious rhythm on groups of people or individuals, whether it be slow, for meditation, or really fast, where you raise their energy level and make them dance."
Donovan, who teaches drum circles when he's not playing, says that Rusted Root has gotten away from the more drum-intensive stuff recently and that "Revelation #9" is a way for him to bring it to the forefront.
"Yeah, it has more aggression to it," he says. "Some of it's a little darker, some of it's gritty. The thing about it is, it did what it was supposed to, which is express the different emotions I had at the time of writing them. That's usually at the heart of anything I create -- there has to be an emotion behind it to make it magic."
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