bio:

Booker Stardrum is a composer, drummer/percussionist, and producer. Stardrum has been involved with countless experimental and improvisational collaborations, pop projects, film scores, and sound design productions, and has released four solo records (’Close-up On The Outside’ in 2026, ‘Crater' in 2021, ‘Temporary etc.’ in 2018, and ‘Dance And’ in 2015). Stardrum’s music is a highly personal amalgamation of electro-acoustics, minimalism, ambient, jazz, and contemporary experimental electronic music. His compositions are sculptural, carved from the dense layering of instruments and manipulated samples, a pantonal harmonic sense, and an intuitive approach to rhythm.

Stardrum’s frequent collaborators include SML, Lisel, Photay, Horse Lords, Wendy Eisenberg, Amirtha Kidambi, Ben Vida, Will Epstein, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Chris Williams, Patrick Shiroishi, Carl Stone, Lee Ranaldo, and Nels Cline. Stardrum has scored films by Suneil Sanzgiri and Miranda Javid. He was a OneBeat fellow, a New Amsterdam Composer fellow, a Pioneer Works resident and a Denniston Hill resident. Stardrum has had new works commissioned for The Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington D.C.), National Sawdust (Brooklyn, NY) and Indexical (Santa Cruz, CA). He has toured in the US, Europe, Asia, and South America and has performed at such festivals as Big Ears (US), Rewire (NL), Le Guess Who (NL), BRDCST (BE), Moers (DE), Meltdown (U.K.), Brighton (U.K), Festival Bo:m (ROK), Hopscotch (US) and Ecstatic Music (US). His discography includes solo and collaborative releases on independent labels such as International Anthem, We Jazz, NNA Tapes, Northern Spy Records, Mexican Summer, Saddle Creek, Luminelle, Prom Night Records and Home Tapes. Booker lives in the Hudson Valley in New York State.


select press:

Mojo Magazine 
“There's that same free-roaming, heavily processed approach to jazz, electronica, post-rock and ambience... But Stardrum heads further out here, making his own, Partch-like mallet instruments, capturing insects and birds on field recordings, and sometimes - notably on the superb Hover - entering a rarefied dronespace. SML are a truly exciting band, and that spirit's still present to invigorate these eight tracks, making for a kinetic new spin on minimalism and microtonal composition.” -John Mulvey

Futurism Restated
““Hover” plunges into a porous weave of drone reminiscent of Laurel Halo’s Atlas and “Inside Sounds” is a kind of contemplative ambient jazz crosscut by a cosmic zipper. But the heart of the album is located in “Telluric” and “Third Nature,” in which Stardrum’s supple drumming provides the rippling axis around which his bandmates’ contributions—Necks-like piano, sinewy cello and upright bass, the sunrise glint of a hissing flute—revolve like celestial bodies.” -Philip Sherburne

Aquarium Drunkard
“But the key to the whole enterprise is maybe Booker Stardrum, the percussionist who continually knocks these grooves sideways without ever tipping them over onto their backs. His beats are quick and daring, full of varied tonalities and textures. They power these songs forward in a snake-y, non-linear way. They always feel a bit dangerous, a bit risky, but never disintegrate.” -Jen Kelly

Pitchfork

“On the seven-minute highlight “Trash Island,” he begins with a collage of scraped and battered drums and cymbal hits. Without warning, the drums stop, only to reveal glistening organs before the scratching and bashing returns. And on it goes, swinging like a pendulum between chaos and order, violence and idyll—cycling, turning in circles, as only a drummer knows how.” -Philip Sherburne


The Wire
“The most impressive track on Temporary etc. is “Swimming,” which conjures images of an otherworldly rainforest sojourn, as an eerie aural fug of indeterminate origin rises like mist from a primordial alien swamp. With this uncategorizable album Stardrum further solidifies his position as one of America’s most intriguing composers.” -Dave Segal


Noisey

“There’s a track at its center called “A Passage or Time in a Hanging Truth,” which explores dense clustered synth harmonies over the course of five-and-a-half minutes, calling upon the legacy of drone music to freeze the record’s momentum at its center, to bask for a moment in uneasy stillness. This turns out to be true even of the moments when Stardrum plays more recognizable rhythms, there is a slip-stream that occurs even when his playing is fast and scattered. He creates bubbles in which you can rest, moments of stillness amid the flailing.” -Colin Joyce

Modern Drummer
“The drummer, who grew up in a household steeped in top-level twentieth-century classical music performance, has built up an impressive résumé featuring some of the most compelling experimental pop and rock groups of the past decade. He’s also released an adventurous percussion-oriented electroacoustic album and developed an evolving solo show that reveals unique methods.” -Adam Budofsky

New York Times
AllMusic
Boomkat
The Quietus
Flood Magazine
Billboard
LA Times
Thrd Coast
Resident Advisor
Gorilla vs. Bear