Saying Ian Chang is a drummer is like saying a unicorn is a horse. Sure, it’s accurate, but it’s not the whole story. A more apt assessment is that Chang is the percussionist evolved: part human, part machine. He uses a complex array of drum triggers to play and manipulate samples live, fusing real-world drums with abstracted sources so that they’re interacting and infecting each other. The juxtaposition of computer-manipulated sounds and the natural swing of Chang’s playing is striking. It gives his music a biomechanical quality that’s hard to pin down. It’s like free jazz, marching band cadences, breakcore, and a bucket drummer all built a beautiful, beat-driven baby.
We met up with Ian at a metal shop and recorded him playing not-so-rudimentary rudiments and polyrhythms on anything he could find. He hit scrap metal, pipes, and machines that sounded strange. We recorded his performance on a Zoom HR4 with a Sennheiser K6 with an ME66 shotgun microphone and ME64 cardioid modules, where appropriate. We processed the sounds, sliced them into loops and one-shots, then turned the most melodic lines into a scripted Kontakt instrument (which we’ve included in the pack) and made even more loops and presets from that.
Metal Structures is a beat maker’s bonanza. Its sounds are as equally at home in cinematic scores as they are in trap, lo-fi, or IDM.
