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Welcome to the Trap Set, where each week we explore the lives of drummers.

I want to play something for you. You're hearing out and about by Dietrich and Barnes, featuring my guest Jeremy Barnes on drums.

The band, which also features Deerhoof's John Dietrich on guitar, is just one of Jeremy's many creative outlets.

For 15 years, he's played accordion and percussion in a hawk and a hacksaw, a folk duo with his wife, violinist Heather Troast.

He played drums on the first album by popular rock band Beirut. He composes music for an Albanian TV show.

He's currently scoring Forrest of Sleep, a video game loosely based on Russian fairy tales,

and he co-founded his own label, L.M. Duplication.

Jeremy began his career 20 years ago when he joined Neutral Milk Hotel, the band for which he is perhaps best known. Neutral

milk hotel was popular with critics but struggled to find an audience during its initial existence,

leading to a hiatus in 1999. In the intervening years, however, the band's audience grew exponentially

and many consider 1998's in the aeroplane over the sea a classic

album I spoke to Jeremy at the tail end of neutral milk hotel's highly anticipated reunion tour

last year and now our conversation with Jeremy Barnes.

I remember early on seeing, like on PBS, seeing footage of Gene Krupa playing and being really struck with how amazing it was.

And then I was lucky that I had an older brother

who was getting into music earlier,

and he really influenced me,

I could hear what he was listening to across the hall.

And he got really into, like, all this great stuff early on.

...