three drums and bass-guitar – heavy dance music

Drum Ecstasy are one of the stars of the underground music scene in Belarus. A quartet of 3 drummers and 1 bassplayer who play propulsive polyrhythmic anthems bedded in dark, sub-industrial low-end smear; they have been a fixture on the club scene for a number of years. Drum Ecstasy is a live band that plays heavy dance music using various bass guitar sounds, supported by a massive background of three and more drummers. In individual compositions electric drills and saws noises and sound effects are used. In average Drum Ecstasy performance lasts 40-90 minutes, often slides and videos are used. There is also another variant of sounding with industrial percussion. Drum Ecstasy exists since 1993.

Members: Philippe Tschmyr - bass guitar. Has several solo projects, gives concerts since 1986. Aliaksandr Krautsou - drums. He played in school brass band, then in metal bands "Septic Shizo", "FTTF". Aliaksandr Haroh - drums. Graduated from Belarusian Academy of Music. Played in "Znich" band. Worked in the symphony orchestra of Belarusian State Opera and Ballet Theatre. At the present moment he works in the symphony orchestra of Belarusian State Musical Comedy Theatre. Stsiapan Bitus - drums. He has graduated from Belarusian Academy of music. Played in a punk band. Worked in the President's orchestra of Belarus.

 This is the band whose music you can hear in the Russian sequel Night Watch: Nochnoi Dozor succesfully shown in the world since autumn 2005.
Their music sounds while downloading the web-page of the film on the Twentieth Century Fox web-site http://www.foxinternational.com/nl/night-watch-dvd/

PRESS-RELEASES

Drum Ecstasy from Belarus exemplify artsy beautiful rebellion: bass guitar and three drummers...
TAMIZDAT.org

 

. Their live shows fuse pure energy with musical abstraction. They draw largely on their own material, and the occasional recognisable riff from other songs that they have adapted to their own style, sort of mutant cover songs, to give the audience something familiar. They admit, however, that they have opened for more than a couple of bands that they would consider polar opposites to their own music; European pop acts that they have nothing in common with. But, they reason, if only one person in that audience walks away with a new perspective on music, then maybe it's worth it. While most of it is instrumental, the band has experimented with a few vocal tracks, three of which are included on the disc. The vocals have a trancy, chant-like shamanic feel to them, in keeping with the tribal power of the drums, although one track, the haunting Jangaly is pure droning bliss. Certainly one of the standout tracks is the epic, 15-minute collaboration with Traktech Attack, in which a mesmerising industrial ambience swirls around, dark, intense percussive poly-rhythms. The energised spirit of the performances, both live and studio is exhilarating. Drummers Alexandr Kravtsov, Andrey Tchugunov, Alexandr Gorokh work together to both control the rhythms and to unleash wild storms of percussive frenzy. Philipp Tchmyr is one of the most creative bassists playing today, wrenching sounds from his instrument that range from the throbbingly rhythmic, to screeching howls, to spaced-out drones.

For fans who have already experienced the band live, this is a great collection of multimedia stuff to groove to, and for those who haven't discovered Drum Ecstasy, short of catching them live somewhere in Europe, it's a great way to check them out.

http://www.aural-innovations.com/issues/issue21/drumect1.html

 

Their website has a good selection of mp3s for you to download, including these two standout tracks, Nails and Empire...

 

GIGS

The band had their concerts in such clubs as Tacheles (Berlin), Eimer (Berlin), Stubnitz(Rostock), AV-Art gallery (Copenhagen), African National Unity office (Copenhagen), Karavan Sarai (Tbilisy), Effenaar (Eindhoven) and others in Belgium, Germany, The Netherlands and Italy.
They took part in such festivals as SKIF 2000-2002 (S.Pt.), Shein Festival (Netherlands), industrial music festival (Leipzig), Kurklesas(Lithuania), etc.

http://www.drumecstasy.com