A two-hour marathon, Maxwell Patterson’s follow-up to 2020’s Injecting Logic is minuscule next to its 104-hour predecessor, but the Victoria, B.C., drummer makes up for its proportional brevity with studied discipline. Recorded in a single take, this offering once again captures Patterson beating minimalist phrases that are grindingly protracted, but more expertly locked in. Where his hand could previously fumble with excess adrenaline, here Patterson manoeuvres the kit with laser-like precision, repeatedly delivering hypnotic passages through fundamentally brutalist means. It could be tempting to imagine that Patterson spent the last five years honing the rudiments that informed these long-form improvisations with monkish devotion, but that would require turning a blind eye to the firehose of releases issued since 2020: sprawling series like the seventeen-part the same as my red; the fifty-six-part blasted sentinel; the thirty-five-part no guardians for rusted remains; or more conventional albums like not all prophecies and when the dandelions no longer grow, the latter briefly expanding i.o to a full band. That’s not even mentioning Patterson’s work in Pet Retina, Modern Carpentry’s drum-off with Niko Wood, or drumcrusher, reinterpreting Dreamcrusher’s “nihilist queer revolt musik.”
Frenetic but dutifully systematic, Patterson fuses the techniques and intensity of noise and post-hardcore with the progressive languages of free jazz and math rock, bridging and bending traditions. Expertly miked, with no effects or extended technique, Patterson’s blows have the percussive impact of an automatic nail gun—unadulterated drumming at its most cerebral and concussive.
Tom Beedham is a musician, writer, and organizer.