Music

Buke & Gass: Sharing their strangeness brings them together

Laura Snapes | Tuesday 1 June, 2010 21:43

When the echoes of old bands flow through most modern music like blood through a vein, it’s a real rarity to hear a group so weirdly unique that drawing comparisons becomes almost impossible. Brooklyn duo Buke & Gass are one of those bands. Their name has been mentioned in the same sentence as bastardised Appalachian folk music, Montreal’s the Dirty Projectors, Led Zeppelin and PJ Harvey. snipe gets hints of a bluesy Deerhoof with a tart Marnie Stern-a-like vocal, but even that’s a reductive take on their unconventional sound.

“I don’t really think about what other bands we sound like,” says Aron Sanchez, the male half of the band, who builds instruments for the Blue Man Group as his day job. “I think the weirdness of our instrumentation reflects that it’s just that—we’re not trying to sound like The Melvins or whoever. Because of our limitations, we can’t really do that…”

“So what’s the point in trying?!” giggles Arone Dyer, a former luthier and velodrome racer and current bike mechanic, bringing up the lady side of proceedings.
Buke and Gass came to fruition about two and a half years ago, when the pair got back in touch after a period of not talking, self-releasing an EP, ‘+/-’, in 2008. Although it’s hard to draw a direct sonic parallel, they’ve been likened to the magnificent Captain Beefheart, a more apt comparison that works based on their shared individual strangeness. Much as every band might strive to coin their own sound, it’s only the David Byrnes and Konono No. 1s of this world who go about it by inventing their own instruments – out of both experimentation and necessity. “Buke” and “gass” (rhymes with “bass”) are also the names of Aron and Arone’s self-built instruments.

“I play the gass,” explains Aron, “which is a hybrid between a bass and a guitar. Then live, I have a bass drum, which also has snare and tambourine on it. My left foot’s switching pedals around.”

“A buke was a kind of baritone ukulele,” adds Arone. “But now it’s more of a miniature guitar. I needed something smaller because I was having wrist problems. When we’re performing, I also have bells and a toebourine on my left ankle, on my right foot I’m controlling a pedal, then I’m singing to boot.”

Seeing Buke & Gass live is like witnessing the world’s most elaborate display of two people who can definitely pat their heads and rub their bellies simultaneously. Being hooked up to all their instruments means that they have to sit throughout the show, and coupled with the fact that they named the band after these cannibalised contraptions, this encapsulates how their self-imposed limitations control their sound, both informing and holding it back.

“We chose instruments that were kind of a challenge,” says Aron. “But ones that can also make a lot of different noises. We’re really into form follows function, and the challenges that the limitations bring are what creates our music.”

After catching the eyes of Aaron and Bryce Dessner of The National, the twins signed Dyer and Sanchez to their label, Brassland, who will be releasing B&G’s debut album—a “more upbeat, dancier” affair—sometime later this year. Full disclosure: it was an email from Aaron that brought them to Snipe’s attention. After a two day press junket promoting ‘High Violet’, he personally emailed some of the journalists he’d met to see if they’d check out the support act for their two sold out UK dates—quite the accolade. Based on what we heard on those two dates, when the record eventually makes its way onto shelves, Buke & Gass will be hearing a whole lot more praise.

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