If you aren't acquainted with Gutbucket, allow us to introduce you to your new favorite band. Visit their MySpace page and listen to Money Mgmnt for a Better Life. You've never heard anything like it. Go ahead and listen, we'll wait. . . . . now that you're dizzy and perhaps slightly disoriented, read on.
Mad Art Gallery proudly presents Gutbucket with The Helium Tapes at Mad Art Gallery on Friday, April 10, 2009. Doors open at 8:00 p.m. Show begins at 9:00 p.m. Tickets are $10 and available through Metrotix.
Destroying walls between art-rock, avant-squonk, and mathed-out prog, Gutbucket's thoroughly composed music enters a place of pure sound. The decade-old New York quartet is equally comfortable playing in front of 900 sweaty teenage skate-punks, a crowd of cosmic indie-psych freaks, or on an anarchist German art collective houseboat. More importantly, their music fits right in. Called "stomprovisors" by the Village Voice, the band has spent the past 10 years injecting a shot of glorious spazmitude into the minimalist cool of the New York downtown music scene.
Gutbucket attacks their music with a ferocity usually reserved for punk. The group has an amazing level of musicianship, a solid jazz background, and rock and roll productions. Bassist Eric Rockwin claims to have learned every Paul McCartney bassline by heart before his father humbled him with a Ray Brown CD. Guitarist Ty Citerman was "into everything that was Hendrix and Van Halen and Led Zeppelin." With the release of Sludge Test in 2006 (released on Cantaloupe in the US and NRW Records in Europe), Gutbucket pushed even further into avant-rock with a mix of tunes -- some short, exclamatory bursts of aggression, others long-form sonic explorations with surprising twists and turns -- that kept listeners on their toes.
Founded by saxophonist Ken Thomson, guitarist Ty Citerman, and drummer Paul Chuffo between shifts at Columbia University's vital WKCR, Gutbucket built their reputation in New York clubs before spreading across east coast college towns like a hoard of freethinking barbarians. Trips to Europe soon followed, with over a dozen tours in 19 countries. "They think we're jazz over there," Ty says. "We like to go there. We're art over there. I'm not sure what we are over here."
If Gutbucket themselves don't know, it can be forgiven. Though they've built up an American following in towns from Hattiesburg to Santa Fe, San Francisco to Wichita -- not to mention a few intense passes across the festival circuit -- their work has remained far broader than a simple touring itinerary suggests. They have engaged in numerous projects -- many of them more akin to the art-rock stage antics of The Flaming Lips or even Phish than the somber-minded blowing of the downtown atonalists. While their shows are legendarily frenzied ("Keep all limbs, drinks and small children well clear of manic sax dervish Ken Thomson," Time Out New York warned), they are also events unto themselves.
"Frenzy and uplift are unifying principles on Sludge Test(Cantaloupe), this downtown group's twitchy new album. Its live shows pursue the same ideal, forcing a conversation between punk, funk and free jazz for saxophone, guitar, bass and drums."
- The New York Times
"A collection of tunes as attractive, unsettling and dangerous as the cute little girl with the scary knife on theCD's front cover."
- Time Out New York
"Gutbucket has refined its punk-jazz blend to the point where it hits like a pop in the kisser."
- Village Voice
"Ken Thomson's freewheeling saxophone is the band's signature sound, but he plays over anything from oddly-timed prog freakouts to punk raveups;the very adept musicians are clearly in control of the chaotic sound they create. A classic case of a band that defies categorization."
- Washington Post
"Gutbucket continues to play with the frantic intensity of a punk band while exhibiting dazzling turn-on-dime chops. The free range collision of ideas isn't just a breath of fresh air;it's a visceral sock in the chops."
- Jazzweek
"Devastatingly precise playing...solos feel like a lid exploding"- Jazz Times
"Good, disgusting jazz metal from New York, Gutbucket's sound really is unlike any other's....Sludge Testmakes you want to destroy everything in sight. At the Hideout tonight, it might be wise to stay away from the glass."
- Chicago New City
"You know that term post-punk that has been often misused as of late?Well, it actually does apply to Gutbucket."
- Razorcake zine
"Like any self-respecting jazz-thrash-rock-latin-noise band from the dark underbelly of New York, Gutbucket have a peerless way....There is something smart, sleek and assured about Gutbucket, and when they begin firing on all cylinders it makes for an exhilarating, intelligently performed racket."
- The Guardian UK
"Blends free jazz, hardcore rock, oddball time signatures, and other elements into a cacophonous, humor-laden sound all its own."
- Boston Globe
"Extreme sonic turns, blasting from riff-based heavy rock to jazz and klezmer, often in one song." - The Onion
|
