Aidan Lowe

Drummers are super weird, and I mean that in the best possible way. When I started playing music in school at age 9, I really wanted to be a drummer, but the teacher thought it would be better for me to learn trombone. FINE.

My teacher was probably right. Today, watching a skilled drummer like Aidan Lowe lay down tracks in his cavelike basement studio in the Neukölln borough of Berlin, I can’t help but feel some mixture of awe and trepidation. Even for a pretty simple song in a common time signature, the amount of technical physical coordination on display is weirdly complex; I feel a little bit like I’m watching a fight scene from Dune. The artistry of it all is really inspiring.

Aidan is also just a genuine joy to be around, especially in the recording studio. His relentlessly upbeat but relaxed attitude is infectious and makes you feel like nothing can really go wrong—it’s very Australian of him. He originally trained in jazz and has spent the last 15+ years recording and touring professionally. Along the way he’s become a highly skilled recording engineer and producer.

Right after we spent three days completing all the drum and percussion tracks for the What More EP, Aidan was planning to record his first hip-hop drum sample pack before flying back to Oz for a little time off. Drum sample packs are insanely dense, often containing hundreds of short, complex rhythms, and each one needs to be technically flawless. Aidan had calculated that he could knock it out in about three weeks if he recorded every day that remained in December. “20 days—I can do that, right?” he asked me. It was clearly a rhetorical question, I didn’t need to tell him she’ll be apples. So I just smiled.

You can hear Aidan’s wide range of drumming, engineering, and producing work on his Spotify playlist, and you can also see photos of his super cool studio where we recorded the drums for What More on his website and Instagram.