Hello.
My name is Andy Walker.
I do a few things.
I drum
I taught myself to drum at the relatively late age of 21 or thereabouts, after having realized that a lifetime of tapping on desks, doors, beds, mugs and other people was clearly an omen. Nowadays I'm making up for lost time.
I currently co-lead the Harbingers Drum Crew, a bloc of varying size (up to 25 occasionally!) playing pavement-smashing beats inspired by metal, taiko, samba and drum'n'bass.
I am sometimes found playing with the Beastie Drummers, blasting out some party beats.
I played for about seven years with the Edinburgh Samba School.
Current projects: learning to play kit better, learning a bit of West African drumming.
I code
My most used language is JavaScript. Not my favourite language design, exactly, but the language I constantly reach for whenever I have to automate some trivial browser-based task. It's like that old saying about mobile phone cameras: the best camera is the one that's always with you. I also spent three years building a CoffeeScript-based rich web app in a distributed team, which has given me some opinions about type safety and the usefulness thereof.
My other main languages are Java and Ruby.
I write music
Current stuff
Mixed Signals (I like singing)
- Repeat (Repeat) (big electronic beats + lazy slide guitar)
- Airplay (electro funk)
- Bird (camtarn drum mix) (remix of Mairi McKay's song 'bird')
- If Not For Shadow-Light (mellow dreamy pop)
- Out of Nowhere (even more mellow dreamy pop)
- Forewarned Is Forearmed (electronic reggae-ish)
- Sound Is Our Soul (a hymn to the power of group drumming)
- How High (political, reggae-ish)
- Shadows on the Face of the Ocean (downtempo stormclouds)
- Dust Cloud Halo (American desert Mellotron angel growling)
- Until You Can Face Going Home Again (cigarettes and alcohol and drum machines)
- Like You Think I'm Human (industrial-pop-ish with a twist)
- Nail (demo) (alt rock)
- On The Way To Search For Jane (demo) (alt rock)
- Princesa dos Orixas (dreamy synthpop cover of the Rio Maracatu classic)
- Set Sail (acoustic musings)
- Measurements (scientifically the least metal metal song ever)
- Fall Down Low (cheesy funk/soul)
- First We Take Manhattan (Leonard Cohen if he was a shouty punk with a guitar)
- Revolution Compression (rock song demo)
Digital (I like dance music)
- Thrillseeker (lo-fi grungy d'n'b destruction)
- Anonymized Set (cold tech house with a message)
- Seeing Clouds Past Clouds (lazy 5am beats)
- Nikotine (murky dubstep)
- Rock Star (hyperactive drum'n'bass)
- Deny Everything (chilled-out drum'n'bass)
- Loud Noises (Hands On Drums) (real drums, synthetic bass)
- In In In This This Message (tongue-in-cheek doof doof based on predictive text)
True Analogue (live music and field recordings)
- Winter Call / Repercussions (Winter Drummers 2015)
- Winter Poem (Winter Drummers 2015)
- Swagger (Winter Drummers 2015)
- Hammer of the Gods (Winter Drummers 2015)
- Five Calls (Winter Drummers 2015)
- Cailleach's Lament / Winter Call (Winter Drummers 2015)
Old stuff
Not necessarily chronologically - these just don't represent my current work. Some of them aren't very good. Take them as a documentary timeline ;)
New stuff always goes up on my SoundCloud page before it arrives here.
Occasionally I draw and paint and make things
Say hi?
You can catch me on Facebook, check out my CV on LinkedIn, or email me.
Photo credit: 'birds - tendrils - hearts - flowers {curtain pattern}' by quapanVital statistics
Height: quite tall
Weight: due to gravity
Eye colour: brown
Favourite food: things without meat in
Favourite editor: Vim
Favourite drum fill: tak takarak takarak tak takarak tak takarak tak takarak takaraka