Neil Peart Gives Update on New Rush Album

(Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

Drummer Neil Peart of Rush provided an update on his personal website for fans anticipating the new album.

Rush In LA

From a blog posting on his website titled “At The Gate Of The Year”: 

“Most recently, I had been recording in Toronto with my bandmates, from mid-October until early December. We completed the songwriting and arranging for the album, Clockwork Angels, we started back in late 2009—before going “on hiatus” for the Time Machine tour, and playing 81 shows in North America, South America, and Europe. (Some hiatus.)

While Alex and Geddy were finishing the writing and arranging in one smaller room of the studio, over in the big room I was working with The Mighty Booujzhe, recording my drum parts. As we prepare to start mixing in the New Year, it is too early to say anything about the results. (I once described mixing as “the end of waiting,” while Geddy calls it, “the death of hope.”)”

Peart also gave some insight into his drumming style which he has been trying to enhance in the past few years.

“In recent years I have been working deliberately to become more improvisational on the drums, and these sessions were an opportunity to attempt that approach in the studio. I played through each song just a few times on my own, checking out patterns and fills that might work, then called in Booujzhe. He stood in the room with me, facing my drums, with a music stand and a single drumstick—he was my conductor, and I was his orchestra. (I later replaced that stick with a real baton.)

Rush songs tend to have complicated arrangements, with odd numbers of beats, bars, and measures all over the place, and our latest songs are no different (maybe worse—or better, depending). In the past, much of my preparation time would be spent just learning all that. I don’t like to count those parts, but rather play them enough that I begin to feel the changes in a musical way. Playing it through again and again, those elements became “the song.”

In closing, Peart talks about turning 60 and staying in “drumming shape”: 

“So . . .  thus have I arrived at my sixtieth year, more-or-less gracefully and gratefully, feeling healthy and strong, and feeling that I am putting words together and hitting things with sticks better than ever. (Though it’s worth noting that I trained for two months to be in good drumming shape for those sessions. The passing years do demand more attention to fitness and stamina.)

Now I have the reward of listening to the drum parts I have performed for this album, and recognizing with quiet satisfaction that I am working at a whole new level of both funky, dirty, greasy groove and fancy show-off technique—a combination I have been seeking my entire drumming life.”

Expect the new Rush album Clockwork Angels to be released in early spring!