Remember all those forwarded emails of hilarious drummer jokes you used to get, and possibly still do?

Q: What's the last thing a drummer says in a band?
A: "Hey, guys - why don't we try one of my songs..."

Okay, so that's not necessarily completely applicable to these circumstances, but still, you should know that the "drummer's solo project" warning light on my RoCritiK 3000 surveillance console is flashing like mad. A quick glance at Steve Lamos' resume makes him out to be little more than a hired gun for Champaign, Illinois' music scene, but the truth is that in addition to being an excellent drummer, Lamos is also a classically trained trumpet player with a love for jazz and glitchy electronic music. He pours all of these interests and abilities into DMS, and there's no denying his superior musicianship, but his compositions come off as dry, low-rent post-rocktronica.

I've seen DMS perform live a few times, and while it's technically impressive, it's not particularly dynamic or compelling-- no matter how you slice it, it's still essentially one guy drumming along to a pre-recorded backing track. On record, I would have expected Lamos to expand upon his skeletal live material with overdubs or production flourishes, but he chose to remain as faithful as possible to his live sound. As a result, most of DMS' eponymous mini-album has an unfortunately sparse, static, overly repetitive quality. There are obvious pauses in the music while Lamos switches instruments or triggers loops, and while he does a good job of making smooth transitions, he still tends to let the loops play for a bit too long.

And then there's what I call the Goldbug Syndrome, after Ben Neill's 1998 album Goldbug. Neill is an avant-jazz musician who built his own MIDI-enhanced "mutantrumpet"; Goldbug features his playing over a bed of rather conventional drum-n-bass breaks. The major shortcoming of that album was that its primarily electronic nature detracted from Neill's trumpet playing, making it sound like just another synthesized instrument in the mix. The same thing happens with DMS-- the presence of sequenced keyboards (and pretty cheap-sounding ones at that) subsume the live drums and trumpet, giving the impression that they could be just as easily sequenced.

So what we covered so far? Stiff, repetitive, cheap-sounding, mostly a technical exercise... if I'm being harsh, it's because there's a lot of similar music out there that's more enjoyable. Euphone, another drummer-led post-rocky project, springs immediately to mind, and I don't even like Euphone that much. Lamos stretches a few good ideas very thin-- the jittery/chill syncopated groove buried deep within "Pitfall Harry Meets His Match," "Shirts & Pants"' gloriously cheesy revival of "Rockit"-era Herbie Hancock, and "SOS"' juxtaposition of skittery beats with a cheerful steel-drum line-- but that he has any good ideas at all is an indication that he'd do well to make the drive up to Chicago to collaborate with like-minded musicians. After all, some people just aren't cut out for the solo gig.

-Nick Mirov