PETER GALL - Drum Seeds PETER GALL

Peter Gall’s latest album, Love Avatar, won the 2025 German Jazz Award for Album of the Year, so there’s already a lot of buzz surrounding his new album, Drum Seeds, which is just as good but impressive in a different way.

With plenty of energy and analogue power, Drum Seeds puts the drums and original beats in the spotlight. But that’s only how it seems at first glance. The new solo album by drummer and producer Peter Gall is much more than just a drum statement. Instead of repeating a tried-and-true musical formula, Peter Gall is now venturing down entirely new paths.

Drum Seeds is no ordinary, predictable album. It’s certainly not a classic jazz album. Produced entirely on his own, it naturally contains plenty of jazz - thanks to Peter Gall’s deep roots in this music - but just as much nonconformity. Drum beats are the album’s theme, and they come across as wild, raw, and brash, yet also embracing and trance-like. Peter Gall’s love for vintage analogue synthesisers then derailed the original plan to let only the drums take centre stage on the album.

The mantric beats evolved into partly song-like tracks with immersive sound collages that evoke associations with the ambient works of Aphex Twin, the dancefloor bangers of Caribou, the jazz of the 1960s and 1970s, The Streets, Boards of Canada, the soundtracks of David Lynch or Blade Runner, but also, time and again, Gall’s earlier jazz albums, with compelling melodies, profound harmonies, and an imaginative, spiritual atmosphere. The distinctive, characterful grooves with their powerful pull, however, remain the major narrative element of this kaleidoscopic record.