POP IT! profile

POP IT! = A large-format percussion collaborative based in New York City focused on composing, recording, and performing new works for traditional, non-traditional, and newly invented instruments.

Profile

Since 2008 Living Arts Apprenticeship Program (LAAP) has been a center for creative arts students from around the world to come and train in a cross-disciplinary “live-in” style apprenticeship, focusing on performance techniques for all performing artists through the study of music composition (Jordan McLean), Aikido (Sensei Gadi Shorr), and drum-set (Amir Ziv).

POP IT! is a direct offshoot of Living Arts Apprenticeship Program, and is representative of the type of work  its students and faculty accomplish.

System Dialing Records is proud to be one of the only institutions in the world that records and commercially releases the collaborative works of its in-house Arts Education Division. LAAP continuously assists their students to reach new audiences.

POP IT! recorded output

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POP IT!

Drum For Your Life

This body of work was composed and recorded as part of Living Arts Apprenticeship Program (LAAP) sessions between 2010 – 2014. In these sessions, participants came to study, train, and co-create in a cross-disciplinary / live-in apprenticeship fashion, with LAAP faculty members Amir Ziv (drums), Jordan McLean (Composition), and Gadi Shorr (Aikido), resulting in the album presented here.
Featuring:

Amir Ziv, Jordan McLean, Gadi Shorr, Sahr Ngaujah, Luke Damrosch, Ronald Stockwell, Max Jaffe, Mack Williamson, Jake Amber, Jay Rudolph, Joey Harmon, Keenan LeBlanc, Dean Buck, Dane Gebauer, David James, Cem Misirlioglu, and Pat Agresta.

Engineered by Amir Ziv at System Dialing Records Studios, Kerhonkson, NY
Mixed & mastered by Abe Seiferth at Spacebar Studios, Brooklyn, NY

Artwork by Michelle Both
Produced by Amir Ziv

* America I contains the work “next to of course god America i”. Copyright 1926, 1954, (c) 1991 by the Trustees for the E.E. Cummings Trust. Copyright (c) 1985 by George James Firmage, from COMPLETE POEMS: 1904-1962 by E.E. Cummings, edited by George J. Firmage. Used by permission of Liveright Publishing Corporation.

Special thanks to Angelina Mike, Peter Strunsky, Justin Stern, Easy Partners, Jennifer Vehaba, Harris Silver, and Sharoz Makarechi.

Individual Tracks

Title
Duration
0:00
3:13
Iris – (Ziv, B. Joyce)
3:13

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Iris – (Ziv, B. Joyce)

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0:00
2:26
Member Of The Mass – (Ngaujah, Amber)
2:26

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Member Of The Mass – (Ngaujah, Amber)

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0:00
3:33
Aliquote – (Damrosch, Stockwell)
3:33

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Aliquote – (Damrosch, Stockwell)

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0:00
1:08
Duet – (Ziv, McLean)
1:08

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Duet – (Ziv, McLean)

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1:15
Rudimental – (Ziv)
1:15

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Rudimental – (Ziv)

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4:27
America I – (Ziv, McLean)*
4:27

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America I – (Ziv, McLean)*

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3:49
Shaky Legs – (Ziv, McLean)
3:49

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Shaky Legs – (Ziv, McLean)

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3:33
Bowls – (Ziv, McLean)
3:33

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Bowls – (Ziv, McLean)

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2:55
Justine – (Shorr, Ngaujah, Ziv, McLean)
2:55

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Justine – (Shorr, Ngaujah, Ziv, McLean)

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2:30
Top Of The Bistro – (Ziv, Shorr)
2:30

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Top Of The Bistro – (Ziv, Shorr)

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1:59
Petrichor – (Stockwell)
1:59

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Petrichor – (Stockwell)

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0:00
5:21
Chrystalography – (Damrosch)
5:21

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Chrystalography – (Damrosch)

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0:00
2:16
Blue – (Ziv, McLean, Shorr)
2:16

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Blue – (Ziv, McLean, Shorr)

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0:00
3:37
Hard Body – (Ziv)
3:37

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Hard Body – (Ziv)

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Album

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POP IT! press

Some of the worlds greatest drummers comment on Drum For Your Life

"This is the most imaginative and compelling percussion-based music I've heard in many years; innovative and adventurous. " MORE TEXT
Joe Chambers (Wayne Shorter, M’Boom, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis)

POP IT! – Press Release

Joe Chambers (Wayne Shorter, M’Boom, Charles Mingus, Miles Davis)
Some of the worlds greatest drummers comment on Drum For Your Life

Chronogram - Album review

"The drumming encompasses frenetic, trashy groove, minimalist time pieces, and cascading textural madness. It's just end-to-end awesome." MORE TEXT
John Burdick

Google Amir Ziv and you are going to learn a lot about the dean of the Columbia University Business School. Different guy. The Amir Ziv we are concerned with today is the wildly imaginative drummer, drum educator, and composer behind the ensemble Pop It!, whose record Drum for Your Life is one of the most indescribably strange and—literally and figuratively—striking discs to cross this desk in quite some time. Ziv heads the drum faculty at New York City’s esteemed New School. He has cofounded ensembles with the likes of Ornette Coleman, Marc Ribot, and Billy Martin and beat the skins for countless others. He is the founder of System Dialing Records, the demonstratively eclectic label on which Drum for Your Life has been released.

The genesis of the project is almost as hard to describe as the breathtakingly ambitious, dramatically recorded percussion-based music itself. It is the culmination of four years of a cross-disciplinary curriculum run by the Living Arts Apprenticeship Program, located in the Mid-Hudson Valley. Participants simultaneously studied drumming, music composition, and aikido. Many unconventional percussion instruments were employed, and, on “Aliquot,” a new mathematically derived scale, in the tradition of Harry Partch. Horns provide occasional haunting atmospheres. Spoken word and chant feature in a number of tracks, as does an E. E. Cummings poem. The drumming encompasses frenetic, trashy groove, minimalist time pieces, and cascading textural madness. It’s just end-to-end awesome.

John Burdick
Chronogram - Album review

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