Once or twice a month, sometimes more, a hundred or so Bandcamp subscribers receive a notification about a new release from Kevin Drumm. Most of these releases are adorned with sepia-toned images likely taken on an iPhone. Some list when and where they were recorded along with the instruments used in the process—“Phone, tape machine, voices,” “Electronics, tunnel, computer”—while others are released with zero context whatsoever. The music itself feels wholly ungoverned by any form of structure, and while there are layers upon layers of sound to be parsed out, they all seem to fold into a haze.
A handful of these works from 2021 up to February of this year are compiled on The Mild Temper, a new six-CD box set mastered by fellow Bandcamp enthusiast Jim O’Rourke. The box set doesn’t capture the full range of Drumm’s work, nor does it really seek to do so. With the possible exception of “\&\\ : \,” a nightmarish swarm of hissing machinery, none of these tracks come close to the all-out sonic assault of career peaks like 2002’s Sheer Hellish Miasma. It functions less as an introduction to the sprawling expanse of Drumm’s Bandcamp releases than as a submersion into a continually evolving sonic practice.
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The music compiled on The Mild Temper speaks to Drumm’s craft in imbuing seemingly ramshackle pieces with a level of depth and detail. “Eisegesis,” for instance, enshrouds a gorgeous ambient drone with layers of chirping, sputtering electronics, without ever overwhelming the music. On “Achromic Pants,” Drumm crafts a dense and ever-shifting collage using only the sounds of a recorder and a dying laptop. Even the most straightforwardly ambient moments on the set, such as “New Old Card,” have a subtle progression, becoming more disquieting as they drone along. He injects these quieter forms with the same immediacy as his pummeling noise records.
On the opening track on the set and its most recent, “Feb 1,” the crackling textures, distant voices, and menacingly bone-rattling low-end frequencies sound like an electrical current burrowing through drywall. It calls to mind an observation from the contemporary music critic and composer Tom Johnson, who described a piece by the late French composer Éliane Radigue as sounding as if it were “oozing out of the side wall.” To the extent that The Mild Temper focuses on any particular aspect of Drumm’s work, it is the feeling of sounds creeping into the fray from a point of unknown origin.
In this sense, The Mild Temper is perhaps best understood as a sort of environmental music, one that conjures images of grimy boiler rooms, dilapidated apartments, and grey Midwestern skies rather than greenhouses and gardens. The music is part of a long line of homespun experimental electronics that channel the deterioration and decay embedded in everyday life. But the biggest takeaway from hearing each of these releases in tandem with one another is the poignant, aching beauty that Drumm manages to bring out of these dying sounds.
