Toma Gouband soloing
"Soloing, I love being free... from everything... trusting the movements that come naturally, daring to go a bit further, exploring, discovering, insisting."
"Un" is Gouband’s original 11-minute improvisation. Its combination of spaces and echoes and brief rolls and elisions around a drum surface and metal percussion create an extraordinary atmosphere in keeping with the underlying phenomenon being represented here—that is the rolling rocks. As it develops that sense of rolling spheres, like ball bearings on the head of a drum, the work becomes increasing mobile, increasingly evocative. If there are drum solos like this inspired by mysterious spheres, then rolling rocks become a privileged phenomenon, never to be observed, yet known, occurring in an interval of human absence. It is a percussion improvisation of unimaginable subtlety, a percussion solo of the imagination, a kind of natural phenomenon in which an artist approaches a profound mystery.
(Stuart Broomer 2025 about solo track from recording Un Peu Plus Loin)
Video by Vincent Moon
Gouband is a master of the lithophone, using the range of tones from the struck rocks, plus other percussive sounds, to create a rich piece that never opts for straightforward rhythms but instead features complex polyrhythms that are very gentle on the ear. At times, the sounds of the piece could easily be mistaken for a field recording of a natural phenomenon such as water dripping in an underground cavern or of a human activity such as miners at work.
As music, it can either be given full attention or it can "just be there." In the former case, the more attention it is afforded, the more it reveals greater details and complexities; in the latter, it provides a relaxing, meditative atmosphere. Either way, it is hugely successful. (All about Jazz John Eyles)
PSI records 2011
produced by Evan Parker
» ll n’y a pas même à « entrer » dans la musique de Toma Gouband : nos oreilles (et yeux, lorsqu’on a le plaisir de le voir à l’oeuvre) sont naturellement invitées par les spectaculaires et inouïs agencements de couleurs de timbres qui composent son univers rêveur et inventeur : silexs, peaux naturelles d’une grosse caisse à l’horizontale parsemée de clochettes ou blocs de bois, branchages et brindilles, cailloux roulés au sol, cymbales inversées recueillant ainsi toute sorte de résonateurs naturels… les cymbales de charleston ont été remplacées par… des pierres, elles aussi… Animée par une pulsation intérieure faite de superpositions de cycles mystérieux comme autant d’horloges disant le temps de la vie en polyvitesse, qui se superposent ou s’entrechoquent, la musique de Toma Gouband transcende l’idée de territoire imaginaire, car elle invite à l’approcher telle un rite social ou encore une cérémonie amoureuse. Un savant tissage de tissus de sons que l’on ressent comme universels, d’un âge ancien, voire préhistorique mais d’une ère à venir ou devenir également, dont la métaphore visuelle pourrait être ces tissus traditionnels Kuba du Haut-Zaïre faits d’étoffes cousues les unes sur les autres, auxquelles on vient ajouter des motifs animés par des agencements rigoureux mais dont la facture semble obéir à des règles transmises aux seuls initiés. Une musique initiée par l’histoire du monde donc, unique, libre de toute contrainte de chapelle, et qui ne répond qu’à sa force intérieure, soit un sommet de l’Art musical. « _ Benoît Delbecq, novembre 2011
"You don't even have to "enter" Toma Gouband's music: our ears (and eyes, when we have the pleasure of seeing him at work) are naturally invited by the spectacular and unheard-of arrangements of tonal colors that make up his dreamy and inventive universe: flints, natural skins of a horizontal bass drum sprinkled with little bells or blocks of wood, branches and twigs, stones rolled on the ground, inverted cymbals thus collecting all sorts of natural resonators... the hi-hat cymbals have been replaced by... stones, too...
Animated by an inner pulse made of superpositions of mysterious cycles, like so many clocks telling the time of life at poly-speed, which overlap or collide, Toma Gouband's music transcends the idea of an imaginary territory, because it invites us to approach it like a social rite or even a loving ceremony. A masterful weaving of sound fabrics that we feel are universal, from an ancient, even prehistoric age, but also from an era to come or to become, whose visual metaphor could be those traditional Kuba fabrics from Upper-Zaire made of cloths sewn one on top of the other, to which animated patterns are added, driven by rigorous arrangements but whose craftsmanship seems to obey rules transmitted only to the initiated.
This is music initiated by the history of the world, therefore, unique, free from any sectarian constraint, and which responds only to its inner strength—a peak of musical art.
— Benoît Delbecq, November 2011