Nobody Beats The Drum
‘I want people to make people feel like they’re discharging when they listen to our music.’
When you’re talking to someone called $jammie the Money from a group named Nobody Beats The Drum, it’s difficult to take anything he says at face value, as there must be a double entendre lurking somewhere in the sentence. But this time he seems deathly serious. Still, for journalistic integrity, it’s worth checking what he means exactly.
‘Er, do you mean ejaculate?’
At which point his partner in crime, artiste extraordinaire Rogier, jumps in with the same question, pleased to have been relieved of the burden of discovering just which part of Sjam’s mind we’re lurking in. One trademark burst of laughter from Sjam later, and we’re back on track.
Sjam: Well, not literally, more like letting go. Releasing pressure and just letting go. The main goal of our music is to make people dance.
Well, at least that’s something no one can dispute. Nobody Beats The Drum’s mix of breaks, hip hop, funk and electro is guaranteed to make you move, or at least get some part of your body jerking involuntarily. In the five years they’ve been together Nobody Beats The Drum (or NBTD to their friends and lazy writers) have established a reputation as a dynamite live formation, with Sjam and Jori in their roles as DJ and KeyJ supported by Rogier’s visuals. And this year they finally laid it down for posterity with their excellent album, Beats Work, allowing you to discharge in the comfort of your own home.
But although it’s easy to have fun with Nobody Beats The Drum, there’s much more to them than a few clever gags. They’ve always had a plan, although one that’s open to any influence and liable to fly off at any tangent.
Rogier: In the beginning Sjam and I were living together and he and Jori were in the same band (6 of Your Best Friends), so Nobody Beats The Drum was the way to join the three of us. We had this little book which we wrote a few sentences in and that became the concept - we want to make people dance, we want to combine music with visuals. It was just an experiment back then to do something together and see what happens.
While it’s not the first time that music and visuals have been combined, it’s rarely done in a way in which the visuals are such an integral part of the experience. Whether it’s the comedy public service announcement at the start of the show or the simple command to ‘Jup’ during Purple Cactus, Rogier’s visuals are the perfect match for Sjam and Jori’s throbbing beats.
Rogier: Like Sjam said, the main object of our gigs is letting people dance, so we don’t really want to have people standing just watching the screens. It should be more like they’re there and sometimes you can watch it, feel it and dance. Sometimes we want to have people focusing on the screens, like at the start, but the most important thing is that I want people to feel the rhythm inside the visuals. I think it’s crucial that things move like the beats.
This synthesis between the music and visuals reaches its peak on their next single/video The Drum, the grand finale to Beats Work, where the idea for the video actually came before the song.
Sjam: Rogier wrote a script for it, and a timeline for it, and after that, we started to make the track on the timeline he wrote. The whole track is a story. Then we thought this is really cool, so we started to make the suits you see on the cover for the video, which became the cover and our house style for the album.
This is the sort of open minded approach that makes Nobody Beats The Drum so refreshing. Although it appear they do have some boundaries. Or at least Sjam won’t let Rogier anywhere near the record.
Rogier: Sjammie always said ‘ok, Rogier, you get two minutes on the album, do what you want to do’ but then the whole the concept of the album was different in the beginning, so it was a bit silly to put my thing on there as it was really shitty, a gabber track with a lot of gun shots.
Sjam: Yeah, a lot of gun shots and bullshit. It’s really entertaining, but we just thought it would take some of our credibility away. We thought about using it as a hidden track…
Rogier: And they’d make the video for it...
And everyone cracks up again. There’s a lot of that with Nobody Beats The Drum. But that doesn’t mean they don’t take themselves or their music seriously. For every funny story about the Planet Comotax lyrics (involving mushrooms, trees, canals and bathtubs in two different countries) there’s the darker side represented in the Quit Your Job video. I heard that tune the day before I resigned from my job, so from my point of view it’s a liberating, uplifting anthem. But it’s got a very different meaning for both Sjam and Rogier.
Rogier: I interpreted it a lot different from the way Sjam wrote it - I find the song very aggressive with the beat crush, really industrial. Plus there were some dark sides I just wanted to get rid of. But originally Sjam wrote it when his girlfriend was going to work while he was just lying in bed, and he didn’t want her to go, so that’s what he told her.
So it’s a love song then?
Sjam: Well, the closest we’ll ever get to a love song. I was really happy with the video, as Rogier did exactly the same as we tried to do with the music. There’s so much coming at you at the same time, so the first time you listen to it you’re overwhelmed, and it’s the same with the video, if you watch it five times you notice new things each time.
And that’s the great thing about Nobody Beats The Drum - there's always more to them than meets the eye (and ear). It’s over a month since Beats Work came out, and I’m still pulling new parts out with every listen. It’s clever, inventive music that will stitch a grin on your face and will be tearing up a discerning dancefloor near you this summer. Ignore them at your peril.
Check out www.nobodybeatsthedrum.com for more details.
Photo - Roel D