Record of the Day: Stewart Copeland, “The Rhythmatist”

Stewart Copeland
“The Rhythmatist” (Cd A&M 395084-2)

An excellent drummer with a very personal and immediately recognizable style, but also a multi-instrumentalist, composer and singer, Stewart Copeland is known to the general public mainly as one of the Police (probably the last rock band that gave a truly personal contribution to this type of music) but his activity has always been carried out in numerous directions through the composition of music for the cinema (he has also signed the soundtracks of famous films such as “Rumble Fish” by Francis Ford Coppola and “Riff Raff” by Ken Loach), symphonic and operatic music (he has composed several ballets, a “Concerto for Drums and Orchestra” and two operas, “The Cask of Amontillado” and “Holy Blood & Crescent Moon”, both commissioned by the Cleveland Opera) as well as many other projects more closely linked to popular music.

such as the mini-album recorded under the pseudonym Klark Kent, the group Animal Logic founded together with Stanley Clarke, the band Oysterhead and the collaborations with La Notte della Taranta which saw him as the protagonist on Italian stages numerous times.

A musician with an irrepressible curiosity, therefore, who in 1985 made a long journey to Africa, making a film together with the director Jean Pierre Dutilleux, “The Rhythmatist”, where Stewart embodies a mysterious character who crosses jungles and plains meeting lions, giraffes and other inhabitants to end his journey in front of a large rock capable of producing, if struck, frequencies that go beyond the human ear.

In this album, made entirely by himself (except for the vocal interventions of Ray Lema), Copeland presents us with a series of compositions characterized by his typical unconventional style, harmonically bizarre and full of humor, where the sounds of the African continent mix with electronics, and sound recordings made on site are superimposed on drum tracks that bear Copeland’s trademark, even if we are very far from the atmospheres of the Police.

Tracks like “Koteja (Oh Bolilla)”, “Liberté” and “African Dream” see Lema’s beautiful voice bouncing on sparkling and multicoloured rhythmic bases while more meditative atmospheres are found in “Franco” and “Samburu Sunset”.
An album that is still of undoubted interest today.

Carlo Boccadoro, composer and conductor, was born in Macerata in 1963. He lives and works in Milan. He collaborates with soloists and orchestras in different parts of the world. He is the author of numerous books on musical subjects.

This text is taken from “Lunario della musica: Un disco per ogni giorno dell’anno” published by Einaudi, courtesy of the author and the publisher.