JAY
POSTONES.

MEET THE DRUMMER.

Jay’s unrelenting groove and uncanny sense of rhythm has pushed the boundaries of the drums’ role in modern progressive metal. Simply put, he’s nothing short of a powerhouse.

Growing up, you always knew music was your passion. How come you ended up playing drums?
I’d played the keyboard since I was maybe three years old and when I was about twelve, I was playing keyboard in a school band with my friends – and one day, the guitarist and vocalist in the band said to me, “Jay, we can never really hear the keyboards. Why don’t you play the drums instead?” Fortunately, there was a drum kit in the music room, so I got behind it, and I could kind of already play. I guess some of my musical training on the keyboard flowed over to the drums – and, as they say, the rest is history.

Who were some of your earliest inspirations?
The very first drummer I heard who made me go “wow, I’m going to be a drummer” was Steve Gadd, with his legendary performance on the track “Aja” by Steely Dan. I can even remember where I was when I had that thought – sitting in the back of my parents’ car listening to music on a family vacation in France. As I began to develop my own musical tastes, it was drummers like Tomas Haake from Meshuggah and Morgan Ågren who stood out to me, among others. Those guys seemed to be doing something totally different and tuning into some frequencies that most drummers don’t even know about – and to me, that was really attractive.

What do you think Meshuggah has contributed to metal and, in particular, the art of using rhythm as a musical vehicle?
That band has a lot to answer for. I think Devin Townsend said it best in one of his songs: “We all rip off Meshuggah.” They truly are trailblazers. The way they use odd rhythmic concepts – polyrhythms and metric modulation – to define ostinatos within their songs… I hadn’t heard that recipe anywhere else in music before. And they do it with such ferocity that, as a fan of metal, it was super appealing. So yes – if you haven’t listened to Meshuggah before, my advice is to start with their album “Nothing,” as that record alone provided maybe three years of rhythmic education for me.

What was the overall aim with the sounds in this EZX?
I wanted to capture the sounds of my kit, particularly the power, as I actually hear them while playing. There’s this combination of things happening when I perform live with TesseracT – I have this pristine in-ear monitor mix and I also sit on a Porter & Davies throne, which is effectively a subwoofer in a seat – and the combination of these two things makes for a super powerful feeling when I’m performing. I wanted to capture a sound that reminds me of this power and punch right out of the box – and we’ve definitely done that. I knew exactly who I wanted to work with on this project too – my friend Steve Blackmon. We’ve worked together on a few projects over the past few years, and the sounds he’s able to capture are so accurate to how I hear them when I’m playing. As well as capturing my normal kit and cymbal setup, I wanted to offer some options too, so we recorded two more kits. We recorded two kick sizes too – because selfishly, I wanted to know whether I should upgrade to a 24″ kick from a 22″ – and now that I’ve heard them both, I actually want them both. This is one of those rare situations where you actually get to hear and feel the difference in material tone and drum size in real time. With the snares, I had a pretty long list of drums I wanted to record – mostly because I’m curious about how I can get them to sound, and it’s always a good idea, especially with snares, to have a wide range of options for a recording. Also, with so many snare options, I was curious whether I’d find a new favorite because I’ve been playing a stainless steel snare for the past few years, and for this session we brought in another nine snares – and I might have found a new favorite in the bronze snare we recorded… that thing is explosive!