Booker Stardrum Releases Close-up On The Outside February 27 on We Jazz

Drummer/composer Booker Stardrum delivers a new powerful solo album Close-up On The Outside, his first for Helsinki-based We Jazz Records, out February 27, 2026 on LP and digital formats. The record is being issued on We Jazz catalog WJLP80 (also listed as WJLP 080LP) and was available for preorder at retailers such as Forcedexposure, which listed the LP at $28.00 with a 2/27/2026 release date.

The album’s earliest material originated at an artist residency at Denniston Hill in September 2022, where Stardrum recorded in "a barn that has a very long reverb and cement floors, and really big rafter ceilings," a setting he says yielded sounds he "totally adored." He also mined found materials after moving into his house in 2021, taking scraps of unused hardwood floorboards from his basement, placing them on foam and playing them with mallets to create wooden, balafon-like strokes that he looped into foundational textures.

Personnel on Close-up On The Outside centers on Stardrum himself on drums, percussion, synthesizer and electronics, with collaborators listed by Bestofjazz and retailer pages as Anna Butterss on bass, Jeremiah Chiu on synthesizer, Chris Williams on trumpet, Lester St. Louis on cello, Logan Hone on flute and Michael Coleman on piano. Bestofjazz’s release listing gives the album a four-star review and the metadata notes the record as Stardrum’s fourth solo LP following Dance And (2015), Temporary etc. (2018) and Crater (2021).

Production and compositional process lean heavily on electroacoustic interplay. Retail and press copy describe Stardrum "doubling down on the earthy tactility of human sound and communication while also exploring rich, electroacoustic landscapes." Forcedexposure sums up the approach this way: "acoustic instrumentalists are brought in to humanize what he's already mapped out electronically," and adds that "the push-pull between humanism and machinery ties into an ecological concept that Stardrum wants to call attention to."

Stardrum frames the project as both solitary and collaborative, writing that the music "represents my pure vision because it's my music, but that vision also involves playing with other people and letting them do what they do and also hoping that they're trusting me to do what I do. But in the end, making a solo record is much more a conversation with myself than setting up an improvised dialogue with various collaborators. Everything has its own special place in my orbit." That sculptural, layered method shows up in the record’s longer pieces; on the seven-minute highlight "Trash Island" Philip Sherburne describes how "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."

Retail pages such as Rough Trade and Forcedexposure carry album artwork and packaging notes, with Rough Trade flagging recycled packaging for the LP. With a release date of February 27, 2026 and distribution through We Jazz channels, Close-up On The Outside consolidates Stardrum’s trajectory from label runs on International Anthem, NNA Tapes and Northern Spy to a new partnership with a Helsinki imprint, staking a clear statement in his catalog about percussion as compositional architecture and ecological concern.