The music of Perry Farrell's Satellite Party is a mix between rock, pop, techno, house, and electronic, a very cool and distinct sound. It was a different approach on the drums for me. If any of you know the DramaGods music, it's more of the Bonham-esk approach, hitting hard with lots of energy! I still wanted to bring my feel to these songs but also try different things that I wouldn't have normally done with DramaGods.

On one of the tracks I had to use thinner sticks for a lighter touch without losing the feel. Of course, there were plenty of tracks that were more on the rock side, and I was able to let loose and hit the drums. Some tracks were just a hypnotic kick and snare groove with a solid pocket and feel. Other songs were more on a house/electronic vibe and would bring some cool hi-hat work with all 4 on the floor. Saying that, I still stayed true to my approach, trying to bring a good feel, pocket, energy and playing for the song regardless of the different styles and feels.

The session took place at Jim Henson's Studio (old A&M records) and let me tell you when I walked in and saw the room I was recording drums, I was very excited! We tracked the drums into ProTools HD rig with a variety of mics around the two kits and room. Something cool and different to me was that both the top and bottom tom heads had mics. We ran everything really hot, maximum level, lots of compression on the room mics for the Bonham type sound which I love!

I had 2 different drum kits in the studio for this project. I recorded 4 or 5 tracks with my 1965 red sparkle Slingerland and the rest on a Gretsch. My Slingerland is a: 14x20 kick, 8x12 tom, 14x14 floor tom, 5x14 snare, along with a 6.5x14 DW maple snare, Yamaha 4x10 soprano snare. We rented the Gretsch kit from Drum Doctors: 22 kick, 12" and 13" tom, 16" floor tom, with an old 6.5x14 Ludwig Black Beauty, 6.5x14 Tama brass shell and a 5x14 Custom maple shell snare. We had a ton of different cymbals to choose from for different songs on both kits. And of course... my assortment of Vater sticks for the session: Power 5B, Super Jazz, 7A's, and T5 Mallets. We had all of the drum gear we needed to capture the right sound for each track and we used almost all the gear at some point during the recordings.

Several guests also performed on the record that Perry brought in including Flea and John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Fergie from Black Eyed Peas, DramaGods vocalist/guitarist Nuno Betencourt and Peter DiStefano from Porno For Pyros. In the end I walked away very confident after tracking 14 songs in 7 days with 1 week of prep time before hand. The self-titled Perry Farrell's Satalite Party cd will be released in the early part of 2006.

For more on Kevin Figg and his band, DramaGods, check out www.dramagods.com

Kevin uses Power 5B, Super Jazz, 7A's, and T5 Mallets.

From www.vater.com