While on a trip through Sweden I teamed up with Meshuggah's Tomas Haake to pay Morgan Ågren a visit at his place. After dinner Morgan showed us his studio and his uncommon drum setup. thanks to Morgan for the subtitles!!!
To call them humble would be a vast understatement. Two of our greatest drummers in one room and they're acting like one of their mum's is gonna come in and tell them to get ready for bed.
Strictly speaking, Tomas is not from Umea, but from a little town that is very close geographically, nevertheless. Jens Kidman and Fredrik from Meshuggah, and also Mats Öberg (who is a musical GOD) are, tho. Aliens did musical experiments with people there.
@@YanusDV Thomas is from an even smaller city that is famous for producing an obscene amount of NHL players, such as Peter Forsberg, Marcus Näslund, the Sedin twins and many more. Umeå can boast of having some of the most well-respected bands in the underground scene though. Apart from Meshuggah, both Cult of Luna and Refused are from Umeå.
Morgan and Tomas are two virtuous acoustic and rhythmic painters. One very dark, heavy and with sharp edges, precise geometry the other more colorful with lots of wavy figures and a lot of blending and merging, yet still with a very strong punch. But what i actually wanted to say: this cymbal collection is off the charts! :D I bet 20% of the room is just cymbals with all kinds of tones and volumes. xD
@@YanusDVI totally wanted Christian in drumtalk but the language barrier was the problem -- I don't speak French well enough for a drumtalk episode and his English isn't that good either. such a pity! I was backstage with Magma and trying to get a shooting date but it wasn't meant to be....
My two swedish drumming heroes, talking about Magma. Doesn't get any better than that!! ...also 8:05 ..."im just not nerd-y about it, he's nerdy about it"
Morgan Ågren Is just amazing - and always comes across as a person you would have great pleasure meeting. I would so much like to see him preform live.
To all the professors that try to decypher and institutionalize Meshuggah's music: it's just plain old communication and training between 5 dudes that love technical and brutal stuff. One tells the other to try something out and the other will learn it until they get it right just like the other one imagined it. It's interesting that all of them love to communicate composition for any type of instrument vocally. xD I realized this over the years, when ever they communicated ideas in an interview or casual recording they started to use rhythmic, non-verbal vocals. :D
when tomas sat at the kit i thought those drums sound shit how can anyone play on that but then when morgan got behind it the thing came alive and sounded lovely
God, it drives me crazy how humble they always are. And I know that they are just being honest, and it makes me even madder. We know this stuff seems "normal" to you, but there is not a single metal band on earth that even comes close to Meshuggah in terms of complexity and virtuosity, while still being groovy and melodically pleasing. You're not "professors" Tomas, you're "gods". You might not necessarily be calculating everything, but what you put out is genius, and that's what matters.
Yes Haake says "I've heard so many weird things about...the band...with professors..." People just refuse to listen to what the band has to say about their music, especially in acadamia. People refuse to want to count to 4.
+holygroove2 he says "we're professors, I mean c'mon..." his point was, that some folks claim that he and his bandmates are professors in music theory... which is of course utter nonsense. Thanks for your comment!
@sheppfun They slightly oversimplify it though. Sure it's in the 4/4 grid but the "odd phrasings" is used more for polyrythms, but when it overlaps the 4/4 bar it's a polymeter. Sure the 4/4 is dominant but essentially it's usually 2 time signatures being blended and made to groove.
Haake: "Yeah I've heard soo many weird things about us and the band; we're 'professors' (of instruments), I mean c'mon..." Hehe. They just think on another level. Isn't it amazing that people have written dissertations on their music though, all fascinating to me to read (and vids). While many others find them "boring" - Meshuggah's music is definitely not for everyone, even for metalheads. But I like that, we fans tend to listen closer to those that are different, and I get why people write about them and analyze their music, its soo much more than just listening a few times or chocking them up to just a djent or groove metal band. Thank you for the video :).
Sources? I mean, can you produce a link to one of the dissertation papers? What hypothesis could these alleged dissertations be based on, I have to ask?
thanks for all the info on the professors from sweden :-) I don't recall that I ever deleted a comment, even the really stupid ones -- I don't like censorship, so as long as there are no really hostile "no go area" comments I stick to not touching anyone's opinion
+Ximon Trespalacios He primarily plays with his friend Mats in their project Mats & Morgan, mostly jazzy and synth driven jams. He was also discovered by Frank Zappa and played for him. He's been doing a bunch of different side projects too. I'd rank him with Gavin Harrison as best contemporary drummers.
@@drumtalkofficial lol Bandaras did a pretty good job of picking it up..without subtitles but Haake does look like the guy swinging the mallet the guy with the ponytail and Morgan looks like Dennis Storhoi
god damn, that house is already haunted by the ghost named Morgan Agren, now who brought another ghost into the house? That house is fucking haunted and cannot be lived by anyone else now.
did you notice??????, they stop to speak in english and start to speak in a robotdrumcyborglenguaje that only they can understand......... and the guy who translate the video
![Tomas Haake visiting Morgan Ågren [drumtalk special]](/img/logo.svg){kind=logo}
