Travis Barker, probably best known as drummer with Blink 182 and The Transplants, announced another side project earlier this year: Plus-44. Their expected album won\'t be released in January.\"That\'s when I have a couple of weeks off before I leave on the Pennywise tour [with another side project, Transplants. In the meantime, Mark and Carol [Heller, Plus-44\'s female vocalist] have been writing, and I\'ll just kind of join back up with them here or there. And then for sure we\'ll work hard on it for a couple of months starting in February 2006.\"
According to Barker, the songs on the Plus-44 album range from straight-ahead hip-hop and retro drum breaks to material reminiscent of gauzy, early Cure tunes. Continued Barker:
\"I\'ve been building all the beats — for this record and the Transplants record — and they come from hip-hop and marching bands and some really old-timey-sounding stuff. And some of the Plus stuff sounds like the Postal Service meets Missing Persons meets, like, the Cure, if you can believe it. Mark and I are playing piano on it, Carol is singing on it, and I add some electronic drums too. It\'s way out there.\"
Between his duties for MTV reality soap \"Meet The Barkers\", Plus-44 and The Transplants, Travis Barker also teamed up with DJ AM to form an as-yet-unnamed duo. The drummer said of the still-developing project:
\"I would see old blues drummers in [clubs] playing like hip-hop songs,\" he said backstage at the recent KROQ Weenie Roast. \"And [DJ AM and I] were talking one day and we were like, \'God, we should collaborate and just mess around,\' and so he\'ll spin something a cappella and I\'ll be playing the beat for it. Everything, all our favorite hip-hop. (...) We play clubs every once in a while, it\'s gonna be pretty crazy, DJ versus drummer.\"
