Drumgita Solo

Description

Lori Vambe was born in Harare, Zimbabwe, to his father, Lawrence Vambe, a renowned Zimbabwean journalist and author. Settling in London in 1959, Vambe immersed himself in the Brixton squat movement of the early 1970s, taught himself to play the drums, and formed a short-lived group, The Healing Drums of Brixton (with sculptor Alexander Sokolov and foreign musician Michael O'Shea). Vambe later had a dreamlike vision of a feeling of ecstasy while playing an unknown instrument, made from his own umbilical cord, which would manifest in the form of the drumgita.Strut today presents a new vinyl single reissue of Vambe's original album, released in 1982 and privately edited, Drumgita Solo. A self-taught drummer, inventor, and sound experimenter, Vambe is a unique figure in British music. Creator of his own instrument, the drumgita (pronounced "drum-guitar") or string drum, Vambe sought to create unprecedented music in order to access the fourth dimension. The album plays with time, blending hypnotic and trance-like drumgita pieces with identical segments played backwards. Echoes of African percussion traditions, minimalist repetitions, and musique concrète manipulated on magnetic tape can be heard — but ultimately, the album defines its own genre. It is a solitary, spiritual, and futuristic journey.