Guns 'N Roses Velvet Revolver Drummer Matt Sorum Talks about Art .

• Matt Sorum/Art of Drums
• "To Sail with Jesus"

Art of Drums is a picture from LA based art group SceneFour using time-lapse photography and lighted drumsticks to get the see of drumming. What does drumming look like? Not the sound of it, but the image of it. With Art of Drums, the see of drumming is translated to canvas.

Funkadelic and James Brown drummer Frankie "Kash" Waddy spoke in Sound Check about his participation. Today, we get Guns `N Roses and Velvet Revolver (and the Cult) drummer Matt Sorum talking. Sorum sees Jesus in one of his pieces, and a skull. He was in Brazil producing an album for Portuguese band Kiara Rocks. He says Brazilian country music is huge there right now. Sorum also has a new electro-ish band of his own called Diamond Baby.

How do you identify your images from the Art of Drums project? What does your drumming look like?

Sorum: I don`t need to get all heavy, but there are spiritual aspects to it. In one of the pieces I call "To Sail with Jesus", it looks like a boat with the case of Jesus in it. In another one I call "Hearts of Ghosts", it almost looks like an animal with a heavy beating heart. Then there are ghost like images to the left. There`s contrast to the shapes. One is softer. Like me in some ways. I can be an aggressive thinker, and intense, but I`m also fairly sensitive. In the picture I see both sides of the emotional offering.

Drumming is a lot like that. There are a lot of subtleties to it. At times, you take to take on a lot of energy, and times you get to experience more finesse. I try to be right when I`m doing rock. But I try to finesse it at the same time. It`s not Neanderthal caveman style pounding all the time. There`s artistry to it. Like the way you hit the cymbals. I see a lot of drummers that just do the crap out of the cymbals. But there`s a solid order of good to cymbals if you hit them light and in dissimilar ways.

Drumming is like painting in a way. The brushstroke is like to what a drummer does with sticks. Similar to a director as well. If you looking at a painter like Pollock. His brush never even touched the canvas. He splattered and threw it. I see some of that in these images. It`s actually more an experiment in movement, emotion, sound, and light.

Did you see yourself playing differently for this than you would if you were recording for a song?

• Matt Sorum/Art of Drums
• "My Skull My Strength"

They cherished me to be more animated. Some of my movements were roughly of the biggest I could make. I drummed the way I would experience if I were acting in a bowl or an arena. The images came more from a go attitude. It was about combining movement with the beats. If you looking at drummers like John Bonham and Keith Moon, especially Keith, he was a guy that was very expressive, and really lit up the present with his animation. I gravitated toward that. Drumming is more than simply performing the drums. It`s antics, and personality. Keith was like conductor, he was back there conducting the whole thing. The way he would swish off the cymbals, and his body movement, the way he played, he was more like a dancer than a drummer. His drumming wasn`t the tightest in the world, but what an absolutely amazing drummer he was.

• Matt Sorum/Art of Drums
• "Hearts of Ghosts"

Were you performing to clicks or tracks for Art of Drums?

No, I was merely playing. It was a lot of fills and flurries. As a rock drummer, I have maybe 20 different fills and patterns I can do at any moment, and pluck them out when I want to. Things I can go to. I did a lot of that. We played with the lighting, and with unlike colours of sticks. I would go for 30 to 60 seconds. It was dark except for the sticks. It was a balance finding when it would go into a big blob, and when was it not enough. We shot about 500 pieces.

What runs through your head when you play, besides Jesus?

Every civilization throughout time has had drums. Whether it`s a war chant, for the Apache Indians, to a Kenyan tribe in Aftica. I believe the vibration from the strait of a bone is healing. As a kid that`s why I started playing. There was a divorce in my house and it was traumatic. Drumming made me feel better. These images are example of my personality. One piece, I see a very blatant skull. I anticipate that one "My Skull My Strength." A skull is a powerful image.

• Matt Sorum/Art of Drums

And Christ is in another one?

Yes. I`ve ever been a higher power kind of guy, and always believed. And in the image, Jesus is in a sailboat. It`s a fairly simple concept. Get on the boat, go for a ride. My whole life has been around the drums. Everything I take is because of the drums. Where I live, how I eat. My livelihood. I haven`t had a tangible job since I was 17. It`s pretty hard to believe that Christ in a sailboat came out of the drumsticks. But it sort of sums it up for me.

You`ve drummed in so many different bands and projects over the years. What changes about you and your drumming when you shift between bands and projects?

I morph to the band. I`ve ever been a song drummer. I`ve got my chops, but for me it`s more about performing the call the way it inevitably to be played. I get from of the Ringo Starr, Phil Rudd approach there. It`s around the song, not me. What can I do to attain the vocal work? It`s not about being a great drummer, it`s about fashioning the song great. When you believe about great drummers, Charlie Watts and Ringo Starr are at the top of the name because they meet the way the song needs them to play, not because they`re flashy.

When I was in the Cult, the strait of the songs and the band dictated the way I played. When I joined Guns `N Roses, I became more care what they were. Including the drink and everything else. The whole attitude. I was like, if I`m going to do this, I`m totally going to do it. It would be similar if you joined a ring or something. Me and my drumming kind of morphed into the personality of the band. Same matter with Velvet Revolver. There, it became forward thinking. Let`s make this ahead. Let`s look back, let`s remember the past, but let`s get it forward. Musicians want to grow. Musicians will die if they don`t grow. If you need to bring the like song for 30 years, be my guest. A lot of people do that very well. AC/DC has through the same record 25 times. But that`s who they are and they`re great. Their possibility is if it ain`t broke don`t fix it. But I desire to produce and try new things. My new project Diamond Baby is totally different for me, it`s all electric. I don`t drum that much with it at all. It`s more of a sonic trip. I`m layering snare drums, and kick drums, and having fun with the sonics of it, and enjoying producing. I`m trying to make these electric sounds an organic, acoustic feel. Which isn`t easy. I hear to a lot of Kraftwerk, Bauhaus, Depeche Mode, Kate Bush, and early Peter Gabriel.

Is Velvet Revolver over? Will you guys do anything else?

I don`t know. I`m doing Diamond Baby now, and truly loving that, and producing. I`d care to do something on my own for a while. If Velvet Revolver happens again, that`s cool. I`m not going to close the doorway on anything. I`m open to possibility.

When is the future time you`ll be in Seattle?

Not sure. I enjoy it up there. Duff McKagen is a Seattle guy. One time Duff called me and invited me to follow up to Seattle for a Sonics basketball game. I consider it was the playoffs. He was all excited. So I bought a plane ticket and flew up. We got to Key Arena for the back and were walking out to our seats. Duff starts walking up instead of down. I was like, "What are you doing? Where are our seats?" He said, "I wish to sit with the real people" and he ends up walking up to the absolute nose bleed section. I mean we sat in the very last row. I said, "But Eddie Vedder sits down there, next to the court. We should too." It was pretty funny. He had me fly to Seattle to sit in the nose bleed section for a game.