Phil Collins. Dave Grohl. Don Henley. And that’s it.

If you’re a drummer aspiring to make it big by donning a guitar and singing lead vox, let me be the first to tell you—your chances are shite. So it’s fortunate that should you have chosen drums as your first port of call, there are other options for extending your CV without needing to add “frequently choke on own vomit.”

Cliff Martinez decided, fun as it was, the Chili Peppers could probably get anyone to wear a sock on their cock, and turned his hand to composition instead. And less than twenty years later (“tah-dah!”) it all paid off by working with Steven Soderbergh (having already done six Soderbergh films previously) on his much-maligned adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, which, incidentally, I loved.

“First Sleep” is nothing but rhythm as melody and dynamic tension employed as narrative information, and Martinez ably rises to the challenge of augmenting pacing and character development through sound within a finite time period. Utilizing steel drums, Indonesian gamelan, and orchestra, Martinez layers up a richly textured sonic canvas, in the process indelibly etching the emotional core of the film firmly in your subconscious.

Paul Motian on the other hand, decided life behind the kit was just fine with him, and to make sure he stayed there created his own trio and wrote a bunch of songs to boot. “Folk Song for Rosie” is one of seven tracks from Paul Motian Trio Live at the Village Vanguard penned by Motian, and for a percussionist with the volitional capacity of Reign in Blood-era Slayer, his ability to keep his ego off the riser and simply “serve the music” is truly breathtaking. Joe Lovano and Bill Frisell are equally culpable here, but then, they’re only playing the tune they were given. And what a tune. Containing both solemn ascetism and filigreed levity in equal measure, “Folk Song for Rosie” is remarkable for seducing the best out of each player without recourse to blatant showboating or contrived cliché.

Sometimes, though, the best way of escaping the drudgery of being told to shut up at every band practice while everyone tunes to A440 is to sell your drums and buy a sampler instead. I don’t know if Mick Harris (ex-Napalm Death) still has a kit, but if so I bet it’s dusty as hell. Lull has become indelibly linked with the isolationist or “illbient movement,” which for first-timers can be loosely described as Brian Eno’s Apollo slowed down to half-speed. Harris’s palette is thankfully broader than that, and Moments has 99 tracks allowing a full spectrum of sonic manipulation, with track “14” being one of the few not to distort when loaded into iTunes. To some it will just be “noise,” but for those needing respite from all the noise posturing as music, it will be relief indeed.

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