Former Screaming Trees and Mad Season drummer Barrett Martin has announced that he is recording with legendary Soundgarden guitarist Kim Thayil. This is the first time Thayil has recorded since Chris Cornell’s death in May 2017.
“Another King-Titan of the guitar recently came by the studio to record with the Barrett Martin Group. This is the incomparable (and I mean that literally) Kim Thayil of Soundgarden, here with Brad Laina engineering. I’ve written about Soundgarden in the past, and also in ‘The Singing Earth’ about how influential that band was to me as a young musician. They were, hands down, my favorite band of the 1990s, and they just happened to be from Seattle. I bought their first Sub Pop single, EP, and every album pretty much on the day it was released.
In the mid 1990s we toured together when I drummed for Screaming Trees and we opened for them on many shows and festivals. Kim was a little older than me by a handful of years, just enough so that I looked up to him as a musical visionary. So as we became friends over the years, we had pretty amazing conversations that ranged from the awesome jazz albums everyone should own, to the brilliance of certain punk groups, to the great books we had read. Most importantly Kim and I talked about how all great musicians, regardless of genre, play with their soul rather than the ‘conceptual mind.’
All I can say is that what Kim just played on the next BMG album is beyond amazing and rather indescribable. Which is usually the case with brilliant musicians who re-define the sound and style of their instrument and become groundbreakers of new sounds. That’s true genius. @kimthayil_official @barrettmartinofficial @bradleyrocks #strangeearthstudio.”
