Hanging on a Hang
Today we featured an interview with James Hood, former drummer with The Pretenders and founder of Moodswings. Now he plays the Hang drum. You can hear him talk about it in the Echoes Podcast. The Hang is an instrument that looks like a flying saucer or two woks tuck together. With tuned indentations and/or bumps it makes the warmest most serene sound, mellower and more supple steel drum. The instrument is only 15 years old and Will Clipman was the first musician I saw with one. But below are a few examples of Hang playing, starting with videos by James Hood & The Portico Quartet and moving on to the many street musician videos that pop up on Youtube and Facebook all the time. Some of these may not use “official” PanArts Hangs, which are now very hard to find, but the effect is the same.
The first time i saw a Hang being played was in a small hippie town 40 minutes north east of Melbourne Australia. I asked the dude what the hell it was and he let me have a quick belt on it. From then on i fell in love with it and finally now own one and am building a secondary instrument out of an old gas bottle haha. If you have a spare second jump on over to my blog – I would love to know what you think. http://www.hangdrumworld.com
Peace out
Sam
I just learned the name of this drum after hearing someone play it almost 5 years ago. So stoked to load these into my MPC, thank you so much!!