Photo by Grant Cornett
Buke and Gase formed in 2008, right in the thick of Brooklyn's artisanal rebirth, and named themselves after the two self-made instruments that define their sound. The buke is a baritone ukulele originally conceived to work around Arone Dyer's carpal tunnel; Aron Sanchez' gase is a sort of guitar strung alternately with guitar and bass strings. Elsewhere, there's the toe-bourine and all manner of homemade pedals. They used to work in Sanchez' basement on the waterfront of the borough's "residustrial" Red Hook area (recently devastated by Hurricane Sandy, for which the band released a benefit track), and recently moved to north to Hudson, transferring their recording and practice space to the Basilica, a former 19th century factory.
At first glance, "Brooklyn band chooses DIY approach" doesn't sound like much to stir the pages of your Moleskine-- or to distinguish the project from the precious, small-batch mode of creation that has come to define (and, some might say, parody) the area. But with Buke and Gase, form dictates function, and vice versa. Their resolutely self-sufficient streak and cannibalized, mechanical instruments aren't worn as a fetishizable quirk, and even now the pair continue to debate the extent to which their decision to break with convention represents just the band or something wider.
On January 29 comes Sanchez and Dyer's second full-length, General Dome, recorded over nine months in the Basilica. Their last release, September's Function Falls EP, marked a transition from their hyper-kinetic debut LP, Riposte; darker, seething, attacking new moods and processes with a gimlet eye. General Dome goes further still, with some of the most scabrous lyrics of the band's catalog, detailing personal, political, and actual violence, rendered even more alienating by Dyer's voice-- part Marnie Stern, part Gwen Stefani circa Tragic Kingdom.
In a recent post on their Facebook page, the band posted two conflicting descriptions they had heard of their sound: "fiery metal-infused indie rock" and "avant-folk." (They uncomfortably settle on "chamber punk" during our interview.) But the fact that listeners can't put their finger on what they do is a source of pleasure, rather than frustration. "That's the best compliment in a way," says Sanchez.
Pitchfork: In being very self-sufficient and DIY, do you see what you do as in any way political or reactionary, or is it something you do in and of yourselves?
Aron Sanchez: It's both. Because I'm sick of bands. I mean, I love all kinds of music, but I'm really tired of seeing four-piece bands or normal guitars and drums and bass. It's like: Let's move on! Let's explore! Let's try to be more unique than that.
Pitchfork: I went to a really depressing talk last week where the two moderators answered a question about whether new kinds of music are possible in the most negative, bleak, unimaginative way.
Arone Dyer: They're jaded! That's ridiculous.
AS: Yeah, there's always going to be new stuff. And it depends on our perception of what we think is music. There are a lot of experimental and avant-garde musics that have been invented throughout the 20th century that are not popular but maybe they could be at some point, depending on our perspective. A lot of the music we hear now would just be noise to people 100 or 200 years ago. And maybe that could be the case in another 100 years.
Pitchfork: Did you make any new equipment for General Dome specifically?
AS: Yeah, I built a new version of my gase, along with some distortion boxes that I wanted for a particular sound.
AD: I started out with a different buke, and then that just stopped working. So we started using this other metal buke that was made by a friend of ours, out of a Volvo hood, and we wound some pickups on it.
Pitchfork: Did you work with anyone else on General Dome or was it just the two of you?
AD: Just the two of us.
Pitchfork: Would you ever have anyone take a producer or engineer role with the band?
AD: It wouldn't sound anything like us if we didn't do it.
AS: We'd struggle with that because we're such control freaks. In a perfect world it would be amazing if we found someone that we totally trust. There's some people I could think of but they're very expensive.
Pitchfork: Who would you pick, if money were no object?
AS: Tchad Blake. He did a lot of big stuff in the 90s and early 2000s: Playboys, Los Lobos, Soul Coughing, Bad Plus. He did two Black Keys records. He has this sound I really appreciate.
Pitchfork: General Dome feels a lot more controlled than your past records. Were you trying to implement any specific changes in that regard?
AD: Simplify was the idea!
AS: Not that the songs are simple, but they're a little less erratic. It was a challenge to see if we could do that. We have attention deficit!
Pitchfork: One thing that really stood out to me-- on the songs "Cyclopean" and "Metazoa" it sounds like you're using Auto-Tune.
AD: The harmonies are definitely Auto-Tuned on "Cyclopean"-- I'm singing through an effects box that only puts an Auto-Tune on the harmonized pitches. It's like an intelligent pitch-shifter. I'm borrowing it from a friend, [comedian] Reggie Watts.
Pitchfork: I've read before that you don't like looping, especially in the live show, because you want people to see how everything is done. What's the distinction between using a looping pedal and an intuitive sampler?
AS: We don't use technology in a way where it's controlling the time-based things that we're doing, but we're totally happy to make our sounds do more than we can on our own, using effects boxes, or synthesizers or whatever.
Pitchfork: What's the story with the album name? In the title track, there's a line about like "carrying a weight dense with general doom," but that seems to have mutated into the phrase "general dome."
AD: Yeah, that's pretty much it. [laughs] When I was figuring out song titles I was having a fun time reading through the lyrics, and looking up loosely related things on Google. So the lyrics for "My Best Andre Shot" are, "All you can stand to be wrestled to the ground," so I looked up "WWF Wrestling" and then I got really into Andre the Giant, and then I noticed "Andre shot"-- it's a move in WWF wrestling, a particular close-up of the genitals, a rather exposed position of a wrestler. Apparently Andre the Giant had many of these.
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Pitchfork: There are dark lyrics on the album about peeling skin off, castigating people for wasting your time, and digging to the center of the earth to find some kind of peace. Do you see the record as reflecting any particular circumstance or state of mind?
AD: Lyrically, I was pretty dark. But it's not like I'm always dark. A lot of the lyrics have to do with defeating that. Especially in "Cyclopean": "Gotta dig a hole right down to the epicenter/ Get back to the way it was, when up here was fun." There's something really defiant about a lot of the lyrics. Everybody gets knocked down at one point or another, it's no big deal-- get over it!
Pitchfork: Originally having invented the buke to work around Arone's carpal tunnel, now when you're creating instruments, what's the ratio of economy to necessity to the joy of invention?
AS: I'd say it's equal. The economy is important to us, and we like to not have as much gear to lug around. But it's also important for that to not have an affect on the amount of sound that we want to make. It's a challenge. There's definitely the joy of creating stuff all the time; I love working with my hands. We need these instruments to sound a particular way. You can't buy these instruments anywhere. We're serving a need by making this stuff.
Pitchfork: Are you trying to pursue Buke and Gase full time so that the band will eventually become your means now?
AS: That's the goal. [laughs] We're getting close. It's part of the economy of the band. It makes sense in this day and age to just pare it way down. We're just two people. It's hard to make any money in music these days, so this is one way to do it: make it smaller.
