Anatomy of a Genius in 5 Reductive Theories
In Lizzie Goodman’s 2015 book Meet Me In The Bathroom, singer Pelle Almqvist from the Swedish indie party band The Hives posited this spectacular musicological theory:
I realized something very important: a musical movement is a style of pants. Think about it: San Francisco 1967—you know what pants that is. New York, 1977—you know what pants that is. Disco? You know the pants. There were baggy pants and ripped jeans in the nineties. Nirvana had them, Soundgarden had them, and Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, they all had the same pants. They don’t really sound that much alike but they had the same pants, so obviously it’s a musical movement! Then there was Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park. They had the same pants. It was obviously a musical movement! And then we had the Strokes, the White Stripes, and us with tight pants. It’s a musical movement!
This brought three things to mind :
As fun as Goodman’s book was to read, I wish it had contained 33% less Jonathan Fire*eater and The Moldy Peaches content and 3300% more sartorial takes by Pelle Almqvist.
I wonder what style of pants represents our current musical moment. Is it those flared jeans Kendrick Lamar was wearing at the Super Bowl? Is it something elaborate and sparkly that Chappell Roan and Sabrina Carpenter might wear and I simply don’t have the vocabulary to describe?
I also once had a reductive musical theory, similar to Pelle’s, of the form “The history of modern music is the history of ___________”:
Reductive Theory # 1
The history of modern music is the history of drum sounds
Eras and genres can be analysed and defined by the way their signature drum kits sound.
You could say the early 1960s was the sound of the Beatles’ washed-out early rock drums. The classic rock era was about John Bonham’s thunderous, muscular grooves. Seventies soft rock was Steve Gadd and the dry LA session sound. The Eighties were Phil Collins and gated reverb. The Nineties? Dave Grohl mixed hot by Andy Wallace perhaps? By the 2000s, rock was on a nostalgia kick and all the drumming juice was in those Neptunes and Timbaland beats. Ever since then, it’s all been a trip along the 808 Highway.
Other sound elements can vary within each period. Guitars can be spiky, spacey, or sparse. The bass can growl, bop, or slink. Synths can smack you over the head or seep gently like a fog. Vocalists are free to purr, wail, screech, croon or holler; but ultimately, what makes an artist feel like they are of their time is the way those drums hit you. Their punch; their presence. The distance they connote; the space they intimate.
Obviously this theory is super reductive. And that’s exactly what it’s supposed to be! It’s on the damn label! But it gets at something that’s easy to overlook until you see and feel it from the inside—the importance of a drummer in a rock. Which leads me to…
Reductive Theory # 2
A great drummer makes their band better to a larger degree than a great guitarist, bassist or singer does
Lo Zun Long is a great drummer. He’s the greatest drummer I have ever encountered up close. I’ve seen him dozens of times: in large professional venues, in small dingy rock clubs, in makeshift art spaces, even just doing sound checks. He’s great in every one of those venues, and he makes every other musician he plays with better.
Watching him is like watching a premier athlete at their peak. Like Nikola Jokic or Lionel Messi. He makes what he does look like it’s happening at a different speed. Like he’s functioning in slow motion, but then his tape is sped up to regular tempo, so his body movements appear uncanny, eerily calm and measured, while performing unfathomable combinations.
When I lived in Taipei more than a decade ago, Zun Long was a mainstay of the local indie scene. To me, he was the sound of Taiwanese indie music. (see: Reductive Theory #1)
For a period of five or so years, it seemed like he was in every other band, and that’s because he sort of was. Good drummers are hard to find, and it’s not uncommon for them to play in four or five local bands simultaneously (especially when they’re young, single and feel invincible).
Zun Long started playing drums quite late, in his late teens, but took to them quickly. Once he caught the bug, he stopped going to school and locked himself in a practice room for eight hours a day. He was spotted in one of those small rooms by another overextended drummer, Dupi, from Taiwanese indie pop legends Wonfu, who asked him to fill in for him in a show by his other band, The Shine & Shine & Shine & Shine. After that first time onstage, it didn’t take long for other musicians to try to scout Zun Long into their bands.
He would strike a distinctive figure behind the drum kit, with a thick mop of black hair on a long, bony face. He also played the instrument in an unusual way. Most drummers cross their hands when they play, striking the hi-hat on their left with their right hand (if they’re right-handed) and the snare drum in front of them with their left. This is called a cross-handed technique and is the way most people first learn to play the kit.
Zun Long was the first player I came across who took the shackles off this rigid posture and chose to uncross his arms, hitting the hi-hat on his left with his left hand and the snare with his right, in a so-called open-handed technique. Once I saw him do that, it felt like he had unlocked a cheat code to free, open, powerful drumming. Why wasn’t every drummer doing this?
You can (sort of) see this technique here, in this video from 2010, where one of his other early bands, the shoegaze-y four-piece Boyz & Girl, are playing in the venerable basement venue Underworld. They were the one of the first indie acts I fell in love with when I started going to gigs in Taiwan, though they broke up soon after this performance.
It might be hard to spot the open-handed technique as he sits obscured in the corner of the grainy handheld 480p video, but what should be clear is the propulsive energy of Zun Long’s playing. The way he clamps into the groove, and doesn’t let it go throughout the length of the bouncy “Be My Friend”. The tightness of his technique, facilitated by the looseness of his wrists. The way he seems to simultaneously lock in and not care at all. From the beginning, I found his playing utterly hypnotic and would often stare at him for the length of the show, no matter what band he was in.
As well as Boyz & Girl, I saw him with disco punks Go Chic, garage rockers Forests, alternative folkies Green! Eyes, and stoner groovers Sleaze, as well as his main band, Sunset Rollercoaster, who started off in classic rock, ended up in city pop, and by now have become one of Asia’s premiere indie acts.
He has also emerged from behind the drum kit and fronted the dreamy Angel Baby, as well as releasing a solo project in 2021 under the name Fossil.
But at his core, he feels most at home seated on a low stool behind a minimal kit, sticks in hand, pedals on feet.
Reductive Theory # 3
Drummers come in three body types
Focused and muscular, with razor-straight backs and immaculate techniques—think Soundgarden’s Matt Cameron, Tool’s Danny Carey, or The National’s Bryan Davendorf
Awkward and rangy, often with a lopsided slump at the kit, like they forget to take the coat hanger off their shirts, but with the silkiest groove—The Band’s Levon Helm, Cream’s Ginger Baker, Big Thief’s James Krivchenia
Animal-from-The Muppets types, all wild hair and scattered limbs—Dave Grohl, Keith Moon.
When I first saw Zun Long, I would have placed him in the second category, mostly because of his body shape. He’s thin and wiry. His clothes hang baggy and loose on his body. He’s all bendy joints and poking bones.
But I’ve come to notice how much his greatness through the years has come from evolving and adopting elements of all three types. He could get wild and manic, like Animal, especially in his younger, punkier years; but when he’s aiming for a delicate touch, he slumps and hunches. At the same time, he has a calm, athletic grace that may not come from endless curls at the gym, but is more akin to the fitness of a martial artist.
In everyday life, he glides as he walks. When describing his playing, he talks about balance and flow more than he does triplets and paradiddles. I asked him about his snare technique and he started telling me about tai-chi concepts.
This sense of balance and technique comes across distinctly when we look at his hi-hat playing.
Reductive Theory # 4
The hi-hat is the most unsung instrument in a rock band
A hi-hat is a complex piece of technology made up of very simple parts. It’s just two brass cymbals, one on top of the other, controlled by a spring-loaded system operated by a foot pedal. It’s one of the three primary elements of the modern drum kit, besides the kick drum and the snare drum. Although they are (usually) played by the same person, often in unison, the kick, snare and hi-hat are in fact three separate instruments, with wildly different timbres and tonalities.
The hi-hat is incredibly important in any type of band music because it both acts as the clock and it helps to establish the feel. It keeps time but it also defines how the body is supposed to move.
Because the point of band music is to get you moving. Bopping, swaying, moshing, gyrating, and pogoing; shaking like a maniac, twirling with abandon, or sashaying with verve.
When recreating a hi-hat sound electronically, like on a drum machine or a synthesizer, the simplest method is a quick burst of white noise. A very short burst, 100 milliseconds or so, is a closed hi-hat. A longer burst, say, 500 milliseconds, is an open hi-hat.
But anyone who has tried to program a drum beat using these types of crude sounds knows how far those bursts of noise sound like a real person hitting a real hi-hat. In order to give those synthetic hits an organic feel, a more human feel, you need to alter them in subtle ways— modulate the noise, change its pitch, sweep its frequency focus, shorten and lengthen the time between hits. That could require dozens of effects: low-frequency oscillators (LFOs), filters, randomizers.
A great drummer creates these variations instinctively and with little more than a piece of varnished hickory striking those two brass plates connected to that spring-loaded foot pedal.
Watch Zun Long working the hi-hat from 0:17 - 0:27 in this Audiotree Live recording of Sunset Rollercoaster’s “Summum Bonum”:
Look at the detail in the strokes. The hand work is deliberate and precise. The top comment on another live video said he “carefully hit the drums like an intense jenga game.”
But as careful and delicate as he can be, Zun Long can also unleash pure destruction. He could smack the entire Jenga tower with one punch and leave you in its shock waves.
Here’s an earlier video of him playing with the band Sleaze. Watch him from 11:45, in all his unvarnished Keith Moon-ness.
Sleaze were a much more guttural, visceral act. “Stoner doom”, they called their music. At the same time, Zun Long considered it the most fun he’s had in his career. He told me that even though the music sounded dark, it was actually quite uplifting and an expression of love. Or, in his words (sic):
“The music talks about (pause) very dark things, but I think for me, that is totally, how to say, 相反。 It's very 正向。 正面。 積極。(pause) 就是告訴你要愛這個世界。 我覺得這個音樂是這樣的。 And music is kind of this. Real love. I think that's how music is. Real love.”
He speaks the way he plays. He takes his time, never rushes. He has a deep tone but can rise melodically as he gets animated. He is perfectly comfortable mixing Mandarin with English, as if each language is merely another element in his kit. He slips an adjective in Chinese after a verb in English like he’s going to his floor tom for an accent at the end of the beat. That’s why I left those words above, from our interview, untranslated. It would feel wrong to even try to translate them.
Reductive Theory # 5
Every great band has a great drummer
Not every great band has a great singer or a great guitarist.
But if they truly are great, they have a great drummer. That’s largely what makes them great.
Therefore, if they don’t have a great drummer, they are not a great band.
So, for example…
Led Zeppelin → Great band, great drummer
The Police → Great band, great drummer
Radiohead → Great band, great drummer
If you had switched any of those drummers with a merely good drummer; a decent, replacement-level drummer who played on the beat and behaved professionally, those bands would still have been successful, they’d still have written good songs, with clever chord progressions and moving vocals… but they wouldn’t have been great bands.
I can already predict a one-word retort: Ringo. And you know what? I reject your retort. Ringo is a great drummer because he knows exactly what to play and, more often, what not to play.
Take “In My Life”:
Imagine Mike Portnoy or even Keith Moon playing the drums to “In My Life”. Think of all the ways they would have made it worse. Could they have kept themselves to something like this?
Ringo’s greatness lies in his taste, his feel, and his infinite patience. If you watched Peter Jackson’s Get Back documentary, you’d have seen him sitting through hours and hours of unfocused jamming and noodling, waiting for George to show up and John to stop fucking around. He’d make some tea, play with Stella McCartney for a while, but when it came time to practice the song properly and the first downbeat hit, he’d always land it. Keith Moon wouldn’t have. He’d have been in the pub by mid-afternoon.
Zun Long’s greatness as a drummer also lies in taste, in his restraint, and his deep understanding of the recording studio.
The studio is an unforgiving place. The first time you go there to record a demo or your debut EP can be a harrowing experience. You’ll go in as a band thinking you’re hot shit, with a pocketful of cute little rock tunes that you’ve bashed out in cheap rehearsal spaces and dank dive bars.
Ten hours later, you’ll come out looking shell-shocked and questioning whether music was worth the effort after all. Those expensive German microphones have a way of spotlighting all your mistakes and magnifying your inconsistencies. And no instrument is more unforgiving to record than the drum kit.
In order to get a good sound in the studio, a drummer often has to go against the very instincts that he has built in the rehearsal space and the live stage. He has to tame his wilder impulses while keeping up the energy he’s supposed to bring to the ensemble. And thanks to the acoustic properties of those expensive microphones, in order to make the drums sound bigger on the record, the drummer has to, paradoxically, hit them more softly.
Re-training yourself to play for the studio is a tough process, but the results are what great musicians strive for. Zun Long says that of all the forms of drumming he does, his favourite feeling is in the studio. “It’s like making a baby. The album or the song is the baby”.
He hasn’t had much of a chance to make studio babies recently, thanks to a busy touring schedule with Sunset Rollercoaster. Their latest project, AAA, was a collaboration with the South Korean band HYUKOH. The two bands play together onstage: ten musicians dressed in baggy pants and silly hats; small parts in a larger whole. It’s a far cry from the early incarnation of Sunset Rollercoaster as a minimal garage rock trio. The one I saw all those years ago in those basement dives in Taipei.
Now filling out arenas, the band has come a long way since those early, boisterous days. And so has Zun Long. Back then, he was seen as an aloof, eccentric figure. Away from the drum kit, he looked ill-at-ease in the outside world. Rumours floated of the strange things he did to get out of the mandatory military service in Taiwan.
But that was then. He claims that fatherhood changed him. He knew he couldn’t keep overextending himself and playing in too many bands. He had to choose a lane and focus on his career. For his son, who’s not yet old enough to play the drums, but who loves to sing. And whose favourite artist at the moment is Klaus Nomi, also one of Zun Long’s favourites.
***
When I saw him a few months ago—at 肥頭 (Fat Head), the longstanding practice space and DIY live venue in the Daan district of Taipei, where he has rehearsed and played thousands of times—Zun Long had just come back from tour. He was happy to be home and taking a break from life on the road. He hoped to start climbing mountains and maybe even try boxing. He was also cutting up hours of freeform jamming he had done with experimental jazz guitarist Ying-Da Chen, because he can’t stay away from music for very long.
Oh and his pants? They were loose and pale green, to match his olive green bomber jacket and blue-tinted sunglasses. They had an easy fit.
Like the pants of a man with his own taste, comfortable in his own skin, and who knows that music is about what’s inside you, not about the clothes you wear.