Nick Drummond’s Technical Breakthrough: Inside ‘Unto The Breach’
Nick Drummond’s new album, ‘Unto The Breach,’ represents a distinct creative breakthrough born from isolation.
Moving away from the folk-rock of his debut, this record layers crisp songwriting with jazz-tinged post-rock textures and prog-rock cinematics. Drummond, who served as producer and mixer, used the lockdown to push beyond his previous technical limitations, realizing that engineering is an “essential piece of the songwriting puzzle”.
While Drummond captained the production, the album relied on “virtual togetherness” with bandmates Mark Mattrey (bass), Ehssan Karimi (drums), Joe Doria (keys), and Cole Schuster (guitar). They developed motifs online, leading to several happy accidents that defined the record’s sound.
The track ‘Tidal Wave’ began when Karimi posted a video of a 7/4 drum groove on Instagram. Drummond downloaded and looped the video to build the song’s “musical bones,” resulting in an unintentional prog-rock thesis statement. Similarly, ‘Hey’ originated from a practice room jam Drummond recorded on his phone. Because the phone speaker was tiny and the bass deep, he couldn’t hear the root notes and accidentally wrote the song in the wrong key, forcing the band to modulate later to accommodate the guitar solo. Other songs evolved through collaboration; ‘Moon Is Down’ transformed from a “swinging jazz lounge” tune into a “snarling, fire-breathing thing” once the rhythm section applied their muscular drive.
Thematically, the record crackles with the tension of spring 2020. ‘Silent Spring,’ the first track written for the project, captures the distinct contrast between a shut-down world and a natural season . Drummond notes that the clarity brought on by the era highlighted by the murder of George Floyd, became the album’s thematic launch point. The title track, ‘Unto The Breach,’ serves as a tribute to friends putting themselves in harm’s way to make a kinder world.
Recorded at Seattle’s Hall of Justice with engineer Sam Rosson, the arrangements are architectural in their precision. From the sparse, synth-laden ‘Searchlight’ to the punk-banjo energy of ‘Over and Over,’ the album balances growth with emotion. ‘Unto The Breach’ is a document of a specific time, acting as a love song for the world-weary parts of humanity reaching toward a better way.
Headline photo: Nick Drummond (Credit: Ernie Sapiro)
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