Flo Mounier

[Justin]

Hey everyone...this is my first post here so I will try and make it as good as possible.  

Last Wednesday I went into downtown Ottawa for a drum clinic by Flo Mounier who is part of the Canadian extreme/techinical metal band Cryptopsy.  Now I don't like Cryptopsy at all, but this guy's drumming was extremely amazing and makes it worth listening to the band.  Over the course of the night (which started an hour later than scheduled because of a headphone sound problem) Flo played 4 songs off their new CD called Once Was Not.  The guitar and vocals were played on a speaker system, but toned down a bit to make all the focus on the drums.  
After each song he came out from behind his set (a monster of a set at that) and talked about each song and answered questions.  Then he went into a solo that I think was about 20 minutes long.  There were many different parts and aspects to this solo, one including tom beats over a cowbell/bass clave with his feet.  Needless to say his whole solo was amazing.

Part of the same solo can be checked out at this site, because it is featured on his new DVD:

http://www.flomounier.com/en_media.html

On the bottom right corner you can find the video.  Nearer to the end of the clip he goes into super-speed mode and it looks like the movie is fast forwarded.

Flo Mounier continues to impress me as he descibed his frantic life.  Cryptopsy had just come out of 30 days of touring, with a show EVERY day.  He also performed a couple other clinics in the Ottawa region before this one.

The highlight of the night came near the end of the show when they were giving away door prizes.  The first 5 were simple Pearl tee shirts and hats, but the big prize was a Sabian cymbal plus a Pearl stand.  Amazingly my name was called to win the grand prize and I left the clinic one cymbal bigger.  Now this would be amazing enough if this was an unusual event for me.  As it turned out, I had just won ANOTHER cymbal from Sabian (coinicidentally from the same series) earlier this month and it had come a week before this clinic.  So now I can boast four crashes on my set.  After the show I also asked Flo to sign my cymbal and he gladly agreed.

That's all for now, and wow, that's a long first post.