Drumgita Solo

Occasionally, you find music outside the commercial mainstream, outside of everything – the music of visionaries, eccentrics, inventors, loners. Moondog, Daphne Oram, Harry Partch are from this mould. And so too is Lori Vambe. Strut now present a new single vinyl reissue of Vambe’s privately pressed original album from 1982, Drumgita Solo. A self-taught drummer, inventor, and sonic experimentalist, Vambe is a unique figure in British music. The creator of his own instrument, the drumgita (pronounced ‘drum-guitar’) or string-drum, Vambe intended to create a kind of music that had never been made in order to pursue access to the fourth dimension. The album Plays with time, mixing hypnotic, trance-like drumgita pieces with the same segments played backwards. You can hear echoes of African drumming traditions, minimalist repetition, and tape-manipulated musique concrète— but ultimately, the album defies genre. It is a solitary voyage, spiritual and futuristic. Drumgita Solo has been faithfully reproduced from the original artwork as a single vinyl LP and is remastered by The Carvery.